By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — The 9/11 Memorial won’t open for another 15 months, but people can start visiting it online now thanks to a new virtual tool.
The interactive three-dimensional Google animation, launched Wednesday morning on the National September 11 Memorial & Museum website, allows people all over the world to see how the 8-acre memorial will fit into lower Manhattan’s landscape.
“It gives the public the opportunity to learn about the memorial in a unique way,” said Joe Daniels, president of the memorial foundation.
With the click of a mouse, people can zoom in on the trees that will shade the plaza or hover over the waterfalls that will pour into the sunken tower footprints. The model also shows the glass pavilion that will lead to the below ground 9/11 museum, with two tridents from the original Twin Towers standing tall in the entrance.
Google donated the time and materials to build the virtual tour, which combines Google Earth technology with models of the memorial and rebuilt Trade Center site, so the billions of people who won’t be able to visit the memorial can still get a chance to see it, said Bruce Polderman, a Google product manager.
In the future, Google may expand the model so people can see the victims’ names etched around the waterfalls and learn about each one.
Daniels said the real-life memorial is on schedule to open on the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, and he hopes to keep it open to the pubic from then on, even while skyscrapers rise around it.
Daniels also announced that later this summer, the first batch of about a dozen trees will be planted on the memorial plaza. The 400 swamp white oak and sweetgum trees that will eventually fill the plaza are now growing in a New Jersey nursery, where they are 32 feet tall.
