American Atheists filed a federal suit in 2012 claiming the 17-foot display at the museum built with a mix of public and private funds was unconstitutional. The group said its members suffered from both physical and emotional damages from the presence of the beamed cross, resulting in headaches, indigestion and mental pain.
Huffpo, Ground Zero Cross
The problem here is, this is just another form of pareidolia. Every building which is multi story has a beam intersection of this kind in it somewhere. Most of the bigger ones have thousands of them. So the significance of this one intersection is miniscule compared to the numbers of intersections destroyed in the collapse. Additionally, it was a virtual certainty that an intersection would come to rest in this fashion, exactly as documented. If I were to go digging through records of demolitions I could probably produce at least one example of this from every single one. It is meaningless, a trick of the eye and the believing brain.
What this piece of wreckage represents is nothing more than the human tendency to assign meaning where there is none. It is not a cross except in the minds of people who want to see a cross; consequently, the reason they want this particular intersection saved is entirely religious and in no way secular. Just FYI, a trained eye can easily reveal that the two intersections are not the same, so the symbolism of the cross standing amidst the debris? Lost on the people who salvaged any old structural intersection to satisfy the calls to preserve the one everyone claims to have remembered.
What if structures were formed in crescents or Stars of David? Which group would find those shapes significant, and would we be receptive to their calls to preserve their symbols? Remember FOX’s depth of acceptance of the structure they deemed the Ground Zero Mosque? Read the hysteria surrounding the design for the flight 93 memorial, and then tell me how these arguments are not religiously motivated.
In response, Paul Murdoch released a statement saying that there was no open or hidden Islamic symbolism in his design; rather, the proposal was based on the bowl-shaped terrain of the site. Other supporters noted that the crescent image was also the shape of an embrace. Nevertheless, Murdoch acquiesced and amended his designs in an effort to avoid a larger political controversy. The architect therefore revised his design into a circular shape bisected by Flight 93’s path toward its eventual crash site. Additionally, site planners installed a visitor’s center and a marble “Wall of Names.”
Seventeen years and $60 million later, the final phase of the Flight 93 National Memorial has ended with the completion of Murdoch’s “Tower of Voices.” Here, the architect presents a variety of numerical homages to the tragedy of September 11. For example, the tower is 93-feet-tall and contains forty wind chimes, one each for the Shanksville crash victims.
Hyperallergic, 17 Years Later
This is the most telling fact. No church has spoken up and offered to host the christian monument on their own property nearby. There are plenty of churches within visiting distance of the WTC site for this to be a simple solution to the problem. Since they’ve already substituted a different intersection for the one seen in the wreckage that christians have assigned so much meaning to, they could just as easily have cut I-beam crosses for every single church in New York from the wreckage of the WTC. Every church in the state could have featured one, if churchgoers actually thought that there was this much meaning in a structural intersection. Since this hasn’t happened we can safely assume that the significance is minor.
I sat on this article for years waiting for a final ruling. There never was a final ruling. The cross is still on display, as far as I know. The fact that its meaning comes from religious belief and religious iconography will result in its eventual removal from the memorial site. This is because at some point the site will be wholly publicly funded and public funds cannot be used for religious purposes. The United States government is forbidden from endorsing any religion.
