113. World Trade Center Steel in Your Area

Steel from the World Trade Center has spread to every corner of the U.S. When the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey gave away more than 1,800 pieces of steel saved from Ground Zero, and communities in all 50 states built them into memorials. A few were designed by famous architects, but most were welded by volunteers. Artist and researcher Sam Holleran first encountered the steel in a posting for a small-town public art commission. The listing described the steel in almost sacred terms and requested that the material be unaltered. Holleran and his brother Max, a sociologist, spent the next several years figuring out how the distribution of these relics turned the steel from the World Trade Center into a nationally dispersed collection of memorials. Their new book is called Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center. In this episode, Sam Holleran describes how archivists hand-picked the most "charismatic" pieces of bent steel from the pile at Ground Zero, why firefighters became the keepers of 9/11 memory, and what these 1,800 memorials might mean once the towers have been gone longer than they stood. Image: The 9/11 Memorial in Tallahassee, FL Topics and Notes 00:00 Welcome to Museum Archipelago 00:15 Berlin Wall Everywhere 00:54 Sam Holleran 02:22 WTC Steel After 9/11 03:44 Saving the Shrouds 05:29 Hangar 17 08:00 How Steel Was Distributed 09:47 Civic Spaces and Odd Sites 10:59 Tallahassee Memorial Story 12:37 Firefighters as Memory Keepers 14:03 What We Remember 15:12 25 Years Later 16:07 Visit Your Local Memorial 16:29 Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center 16:45 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast about how pop culture reflects the museum world back to us. Each episode is WAY longer than 15 minutes :) ✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Here is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 113. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.