The State University of New York College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry is temporary host to a World Trade Center memorial display.

The memorial exhibit, called Reflecting Absence, will be on display in Moon Library on the ESF campus until Feb. 24. The display includes models and 3-D renderings of the four-acre memorial that will be built on the site of the former World Trade Center in remembrance of the victims lost in the Sept. 11, 2001 and Feb. 26, 1993 terrorist attacks. The memorial is scheduled for completion in 2009.

‘It’s a big replacement of the twin towers,’ said Erika Cologgi, a sophomore majoring in wild life science at SUNY-ESF. ‘If you knock it down once, we’ll build it again.’

After Feb. 24, the display will be put on exhibit in Watertown before it ends up on permanent display in the World Financial Center across the street from the former site of the World Trade Center. Gov. George E. Pataki and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is constructing the memorial, decided to put the display on tour to let the citizens of New York state know what was going to be built, said Dave White, representative for SUNY-ESF.

‘(Pataki’s) intention is to move it about the state to get the public involved,’ said Richard Hawks, chairman of the Landscape Architecture Department at SUNY ESF.

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which will own and operate the memorial, is funded through donations, White said. The World Trade Center Foundation includes Pataki, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former presidents Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, Hawks said. The tour was also started in order to raise funds for the memorial’s construction, which is estimated to cost $500 million.

‘Part of it is also to build some public will to and have this materialize as part of the fund raising effort,’ Hawks said. ‘It’s not a small endeavor.’

According to Hawks, ESF was chosen as the first stop on the memorial display’s tour because the director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Anne Papageorge, is an alumna of ESF’s landscape architecture program. Geography also affected the decision to have ESF as the tour’s first stop.

‘It was very logical; if you’re going west of Albany this is the first major urban center,’ Hawks said.

ESF agreed to exhibit the memorial display because it was seen as a learning experience, Hawks said.

‘I just wanted the opportunity. I think that it is a great piece of design work and I think it’s going to be important,’ Hawks said.

At the completion of the display’s exhibition, the memorial’s landscape architect will deliver a lecture at 4 p.m. in Marshall Hall Auditorium.

‘The lecture will be on preparing the World Trade Center memorial, how they put together the successful design that was chosen from 5,000 international submissions,’ White said.

Cologgi said she is glad that the memorial is being built.

‘That’s where the tower was and the towers won’t ever be replaced. The lives won’t ever be replaced, but we can build up around it and move on,’ Cologgi said.

Published on February 14, 2005 at 12:00 pm