For some Americans, Sept. 11, 2001, has receded into the pages of history. But for the families who lost someone that day, 9/11 remains painfully close — even 25 years later, as vivid and immediate as if it happened yesterday.
That morning began with an ordinary civic ritual: I walked to my polling site to cast a ballot in New York City’s mayoral primary. Not long after, the first reports arrived that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. But when the television images showed the massive wound torn into the tower, I knew instantly this was no small aircraft. Then, moments later, the second plane struck.
Three Bloomberg LP employees — Peter Alderman, Bill Kelly and Paul Ortiz — were attending a
customer conference at Windows on the World in the North Tower. They never returned home to their families. Nearly 3,000 others were also killed that day.
The magnitude of the loss, and the depth of the grief that swept through New York City, still defy easy description. It is etched permanently into the city’s memory — and into our hearts. Yet sorrow is not the only thing we remember.
In the bleak days after the attacks, New York and the nation drew together with extraordinary purpose. People lined up to give blood, donated food and supplies, volunteered wherever they were needed, prayed together, flew American flags, thanked first responders and service members, and filled vigils and funerals. Everyone tried to do whatever they could — even when it felt impossibly inadequate.
That spirit of unity was unlike anything most of us had ever experienced. It was patriotism at its best: love of country in action, through service to one another. And it was a spirit I was determined to keep alive as I began the greatest challenge and privilege of my life — leading our city forward as its new mayor.
When I took the oath of office, many wondered whether the city would ever recover. People worried that residents and businesses would flee and crime and decay would return. And the most pressing question of all hung over us: what to do with the World Trade Center site.
Some wanted the whole 16 acres to be a memorial. Others wanted cultural buildings but no commercial ones, while others wanted to rebuild exactly what had been there. After attending so many funerals and seeing so much grief, I made a solemn promise that the city would build a memorial worthy of the sacrifices of so many.
But I also believed the greatest tribute we could pay to those we lost, and the strongest rejection of the terrorists we could make, was to bring new life and vitality back to the site, and all of Lower Manhattan, by reimagining and rebuilding in ways that would attract new families, companies and visitors.
Doing that meant making room for all the proposed elements: commemoration, culture and commerce, plus a renewed spirit of community, through new housing, open space and a reconnected street grid.
Not everyone agreed, of course, and we didn’t control the site; the states of New York and New Jersey did, through the Port Authority, which had leased it to a private company, Silverstein Properties. We could not dictate what got built there, but we collaborated closely with them and we got to work on what we could control — what happened all around the site.
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We began working to turn an area that had long been a 9-to-5 business district into a 24/7
neighborhood, with new homes, schools, parks, businesses and cultural opportunities. “A downtown for the 21st century,” I called it.
As the years passed, we made steady progress that people could see and feel on the streets, but the World Trade Center site remained empty. Disputes among different groups kept arising, which kept turning into delays, which kept pushing out construction timelines.
By 2006, the Memorial plan had stalled. Costs had soared. Design decisions became divisive. And as people began to wonder if it would ever get built, donors stopped giving.
Failure was not an option. We owed it to the families — and to the city and the country — to do everything we could to get the Memorial and museum built, so I agreed to become chairman of the effort.
In the months that followed, the great team we assembled broke logjams, brought down costs and raised money needed for construction. We worked with victims’ families to resolve difficult questions, including how the names would be arranged on the Memorial. And we set a clear goal: open it by the 10th anniversary.
Thanks to countless people, we kept our commitment. On September 11, 2011, families gathered at the completed Memorial. Its brilliant design, by a city employee and immigrant named Michael Arad, was selected by a special jury after an open competition that drew more than 5,000 submissions.
Standing at the Memorial and seeing the names etched in bronze, the reflecting pools set in the footprints of the Twin Towers and the waterfalls that drop beyond our line of vision is deeply moving. More than 100 million people from around the world have experienced it, and many of them have also visited the powerful and inspiring museum completed several years later.
The museum’s mission — preserving the stories of 9/11 and honoring its heroism and compassion — grows more urgent with each passing year. About one in three Americans are now too young to remember the attacks. In the decades ahead, responsibility for carrying that history forward will pass from those who lived it to those who learned it.
In 2023, we opened the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), a project we championed in City Hall and that I have chaired. The center stands next to the Freedom Tower and the tree-filled Memorial plaza, bringing together culture, commerce, commemoration and community, all in one place. Today, people come to the World Trade Center to remember, to work and to meet friends and see theater — just as we had hoped all those years ago.
On the sacred ground of the World Trade Center, memory lives on. So does life. And so does the spirit that inspired us in the wake of 9/11: unity, resolve and a patriotism that transcends party lines.
Twenty-five years later, our country could use more of that spirit. And so in honoring the vow we made back then — “Never forget” — let us also remember, and share with the next generation, the full extent of its meaning.
Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies and chair of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and PAC NYC. He served as mayor of New York from 2002-2013.