From ABC7 Los Angeles · · 1m 20s
Where 9/11 still sits in a glass case
A Philadelphia firehouse museum keeps steel from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so the next generation can stand in front of it.
In brief
A Philadelphia firehouse museum keeps steel from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so the next generation can stand in front of it. Twenty-five years on, remembrance depends on people who keep the objects and the names in front of us. Originally reported by ABC7 Los Angeles.
Twenty-five years later
September 11, 2001 is a quarter century behind us. Long enough that many visitors were not alive for it, and only know it secondhand.
“It's been 25 years since the tragedy that took place on September 11th, 2001.”
Memory needs keepers
Nobody forgets that day, but that is not automatic. It holds because people commit to telling the story to whoever comes next.
A firehouse in Old City
Fireman's Hall Museum sits in Philadelphia's Old City. Passing that history on to the next generation is part of what it exists to do.
Steel you can stand near
The memorial holds real artifacts from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Not photographs of the wreckage, the wreckage itself.
“Their memorial contains artifacts from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon”
Hundreds of faces
Portraits line the memorial alongside the artifacts, one for each of the hundreds who died going toward the danger.
Why it stays open
A museum is how a city refuses to let a day become a date. You walk in, you look at the steel and the faces, and it stops being abstract.
The one thing
Twenty-five years on, remembrance depends on people who keep the objects and the names in front of us.
