Beams of light to mark anniversary

NEW YORK -- Ethereal towers of light, visible for miles around, will pierce the lower Manhattan skyline starting Monday evening, six months after terrorism changed the world as we knew it.

A companion memorial also will be unveiled that day: the 27-foot bronze sculpture by Fritz Koenig called The Sphere. An abstract work that symbolized peaceful global commerce when it stood on a black granite base and graced the plaza of the World Trade Center, the sculpture emerged from the fiery destruction of Sept. 11 somewhat crushed.

New York will memorialize the tragedy and its more than 2,800 dead with these two temporary exhibits -- one running just a month, through April 13, the other remaining until the redevelopment of ground zero actually commences. That's likely to take many months, considering that the trade center tragedy has created a new kind of negotiation of grief that supersedes business as usual. Relatives of the trade center dead and residents of the area have emerged as a powerful bloc intent on protecting the sanctity of the suffering as searchers continue to pull human remains from the grave that is ground zero. In fact, the recovery of victims and the gathering of DNA matches to help identify them is the main concern right now for the families.

For the city, the need to memorialize the tragedy even temporarily has produced a "Tribute of Light," as the dual beams are called, located near the Hudson River just west of the recovery site. The tribute will glow from the affluent high-rise commercial and residential district called Battery Park City, which was built in the 1970s on landfill dumped in the Hudson River from the 1960s dredging of the World Trade Center construction site.

The two light beams, made up of 88 intense searchlights arrayed in two side-by-side 50-foot squares, will cost about a half-million dollars, which covers the installation, security and a lighting technician. Con Edison, the electric utility, is donating the electricity, which will be drawn not from existing electric service in the area but from a power grid once used by an Embassy Suites Hotel that has yet to reopen since Sept. 11.

The beams will be lighted from nightfall until 11 p.m., but are subject to temporary shutdown based on Federal Aviation Administration concerns about how the light plays in certain weather conditions and conservationists' concerns about the impact on bird migratory patterns. They worry the lights could draw migrating birds to their deaths.

Six artists and architects collaborated on the lighting design. Gustavo Bonevardi, one of the architects, said they conceived the idea the day after the terror attacks, when they hoped, like millions of others, that more survivors would be found.

"We always saw it not so much as a memorial, because when we originally conceived it we were still hoping for people to be rescued," Bonevardi said. "It was seen as a tribute to New York and to the rescue workers and to the spirit of the city, really. An act of defiance always sounds not quite right." Instead, he said, the lights represent "a statement or a sign of life."

The Sphere is to be unveiled in its new home at Battery Park, the stretch of green space along Manhattan's southern tip within view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and will remain on display until the redevelopment of ground zero commences. The sculpture was a central meeting point for many who traversed the trade center's plazas and has emerged as an emotive totem of the power of survival.

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