“Together we remember the people of Maryland who perished on 9.11.2001.”
That’s the lead inscription at the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland, a 13-year-old, museum-quality exhibit on the 27th floor of Baltimore’s World Trade Center office tower. It pays tribute to the 68 Marylanders who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 at the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. – the terrorist incident with the largest death toll in the nation’s history.
But a recent decision to close the Top of the World Observation Deck raises questions about the future of the 9/11 exhibit, which occupies one of the five galleries that make up the observation deck.
The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) which operates the observation deck, announced this month that the popular visitor spot will close permanently by the end of May because the State of Maryland, which owns the World Trade Center, decided not to renew the city’s 20-year lease for the 27th floor. As of Jan. 20, BOPA no longer has a contract with the city to serve as its events producer but it’s still the city’s designated arts council.
The 9/11 exhibit opened in 2011 as a companion to the 9/11 memorial at the base of the World Trade Center that includes twisted steel beams salvaged from the wreckage of the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan after they were destroyed in 2001. The indoor exhibit includes a wall containing the names and photos of Marylanders who died in the attacks; a map and other information about where they died; artifacts from the three locations where planes hijacked by terrorists crashed in 2001; and a timeline of the attacks. The indoor and outdoor components were designed and executed as one multi-faceted memorial.
The artifacts on the 27th floor include: a steel fragment salvaged from the toppled World Trade Center in New York, a gift to the State of Maryland from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; a limestone fragment of the Pentagon’s damaged western façade, on loan from the Pentagon, and limestone rocks from the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, a gift to the State of Maryland from The Families of Flight 93.
The indoor 9/11 exhibit appears to be collateral damage from the state’s decision not to renew the lease for the Top of the World gallery. The observation deck is the only tenant on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center, and the 9/11 exhibit is an integral part of it. Tickets to the 27th floor cost $8 for adults; $6 for seniors and members of the military and $5 for children aged 3 to 12; admission is free for children under three. Unless the 27th floor is reconfigured and the state changes its admissions policy so people can continue to visit the 9/11 exhibit, public access to it will end when the Top of the World gallery closes in May.
Representatives for BOPA and the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) say the city and BOPA are working with state officials to find a new home for the 9/11 exhibit.
“The memorial was commissioned by the state,” a BOPA representative said in an email message. “At this time the city and BOPA are working closely with state officials on a new location. The state is looking at options for the component of the memorial that has been located at [the Top of the World gallery.] The state is not renewing the lease in order to have access to more office space for state agencies.”
The World Trade Center is managed by the Maryland Port Administration (MPA), a state agency.
Richard Scher, Director of Communications for the MPA, said the agency has no plans to close or relocate the outdoor component of the 9/11 memorial, which is open to the public and does not charge admission. He confirmed that the state is terminating the city’s lease for the 27th floor.
“The Maryland Port Administration (MPA) currently leases the Top of the World 27th floor of the World Trade Center floor to Baltimore City under a 20-year agreement,” Scher said in an email message. “The city has a separate contract with the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) to operate the floor. In November 2024, the city informed BOPA that they were terminating their citywide agreement. The MPA in turn informed city officials we would not be renewing the lease for the floor when it expires on May 31, 2025. The agreement does not have any additional renewal options.”
Scher said he didn’t have an answer for what will happen to the indoor 9/11 exhibit and would try to get an answer. “There will be a respectful resolution,” he promised.
Scher said in his email message that the MPA is exploring potential alternative uses for the 27th floor.
“The MPA, in conjunction with the state of Maryland, has begun to look at reimagining that space to better fit the needs and goals of a prime, Inner Harbor, Class A office building,” he said. “Existing tenants have also expressed interest in expanding their office spaces within the building. We are currently evaluating the future needs of the floor.”
One of five galleries
Designed by Ziger Snead Architects, the indoor 9/11 exhibit takes up one side of the five-sided tower at 401 East Pratt Street and is the first gallery space people see when they get off the elevator to visit the Observation Deck. The observation level’s five galleries correspond to the five sides of the tower’s pentagonal floor plan, which offers a 360-degree view of the city.
The 9/11 exhibit is on the side of the building that faces north, and the outdoor 9/11 memorial is almost directly below. Other galleries face east towards Fells Point, southeast towards Fort McHenry, west towards Camden Yards and northwest towards Charles Center and the Bromo Arts District. The 9/11 exhibit is not cut off from the rest of the floor because the gallery spaces flow into each other. Visitors to the Top of the World cannot get the full effect of experiencing the floor’s panoramic views without walking through the area that contains the 9/11 exhibit.
Ziger Snead, which was also the architect for the outdoor memorial, designed the indoor exhibit to be a home for artifacts that couldn’t be safely displayed outdoors. It’s also a more intimate, contemplative setting where people can reflect upon, remember and learn about the events of 9/11 and the Marylanders who died in the attacks, away from the sounds and activity on the outdoor plaza off busy Pratt Street. The two components complement each other.
One wall panel in the indoor exhibit explains the reason the memorial was created:
The attacks of September 11, 2001 killed 68 men, women and children who called Maryland home,” it states. “Some were born and raised here, some came for school or work, and others moved to be near family. They lived in 14 of Maryland’s 23 counties and in Baltimore City – 22 people were from Prince George’s County alone. Half had military affiliations.
The youngest, three-year-old Dana Falkenberg, was traveling to Australia with her parents and older sister. The oldest, 71-year-old John D. Yamnicky, Sr., was a retired Navy test pilot en route to California to work on a missile program. For most, it was an ordinary work day – from breakfast with the family to a goodbye kiss, quiet embrace and whispered “I love you” as they left home.
We remember these Marylanders as many things: husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandparents and godparents, friends and colleagues. We honor their memory and pledge our support to their families, affirming the dignity and strength of the human spirit.
O’Malley initiative
Maryland’s 9/11 memorial was created when Martin O’Malley was governor, after he learned that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was offering artifacts from New York’s fallen World Trade Center for use by other jurisdictions seeking to build memorials. Malley, 62, was Baltimore’s mayor from 1999 to 2007 and Maryland’s governor from 2007 to 2015. He chose Baltimore’s World Trade Center as the location for Maryland’s 9/11 memorial in 2010. It was dedicated on Sept. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, after the Top of the World gallery had been open for six years.
Douglas Bothner, a partner of Ziger Snead, said the design firm’s client for both the indoor and outdoor components of the 9/11 memorial was technically the real estate firm then known as Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT), serving as Agent to the State of Maryland. Operationally, Bothner said, the architects worked for a Special Commission appointed by O’Malley and managed by the Maryland State Arts Council, with BOPA as a collaborator for the indoor exhibit. The chair of the commission was the CEO of COPT. Pentagram was the exhibition designer under Ziger Snead, supporting the design and implementation for the 27th floor exhibit.
According to another wall panel in the exhibit, lead contributors who supported the design and construction of the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland were Governor O’Malley and the State of Maryland; Constellation Energy; COPT; Rand and Stephanie Griffin and the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company. Other key funding partners include: Discovery Communications; Honeywell; KEYW Corporation; M&T Bank; MedImmune and the Len Moodispaw Family. The wall panel lists 16 patrons, 43 benefactors and 66 friends as of August 31, 2012. A free audio tour of the memorial can be heard by calling 410-767-7911.
Planning options
One option for the MPA would be to reconfigure the 27th floor and negotiate a new lease that would enable the 9/11 exhibit to remain there. That could limit the state’s options for reimagining the floor and likely would require staffers to provide access to the exhibit, just as staffers now provide access to the Top of the World gallery.
Another option, if the indoor exhibit can’t stay on the 27th floor, would be to find a new home for it either within the World Trade Center or elsewhere. One reason the exhibit was located inside the World Trade Center, planners say, is that it was close to the outdoor memorial, so people could easily see both on the same visit.
The next closest building is the Pratt Street Pavilion of Harborplace but its owner, MCB Real Estate, has announced plans to tear down that building to make way for a mixed-use development. The indoor memorial could potentially be relocated to one of the replacement buildings that MCB Real Estate constructs, but completion is likely several years away. Buildings across Pratt Street may have space, but they aren’t owned by the state or city governments.
Part of what makes the two components of the 9/11 memorial work well together is that they are close to each other, said Jann Rosen-Queralt, a former member of Baltimore’s Public Art Commission, which reviewed Ziger Snead’s plans in 2011.
“I think it’s an extremely important aspect of the totality of the memorial,” she said during an art commission meeting in 2011, adding that she was glad that the indoor exhibit was part of the plan from the beginning. “Because the scale of [the outside memorial] is very public, I don’t think you’ll get that kind of quiet reflection. I think having that opportunity is important.”
Robyn Murphy, BOPA’s interim CEO, said at a board meeting this month that the agency will launch a campaign to encourage people to visit the Top of the World observation deck before it closes permanently.
“We’re going to go out with a bang,” she told BOPA’s board. “We’d like to get as many visitors as possible.”
