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9/11 photos and items open to public

By Radmilla Suleymanova | Special to amNewYork

September 19, 2006

There once was a time when a tourist could spend his first day in New York visiting the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center.

Nowadays, many spend part of that first day looking past a gray fence at what used to be.

Monday, The Tribute WTC Visitors Center opened on Liberty Street, giving Ground Zero visitors a new place to come and try to understand that loss.

The volunteers who work there can tell you about 9/11 -- some of them were there.

One is Gail Langsner, who lives on the third floor of what is now the Tribute Center building. She was in her apartment when the buildings came down. "We thought we were going to die, a 110-story building coming down on a 12-story one, we said our goodbyes."

Now, she sees "tourists looking at a fence and it's all they see, I really wanted a place where we could all put the connection together."

The center has four-ground level galleries that take you through the construction and life of the towers, the Sept. 11 attack, the clean-up and the remembrance. The first gallery has a five-minute long video on life around the trade center before 9/11.

"This Tribute Center allows us to shows the towers from the beginning to all the people that might have never seen them," said Tribute Center president Lynn Tierney.

The center was developed by the September 11th Families Association, and fills a void left until the memorial opens.

The center cost $3.4 million to build, and a voluntary contribution of $10 for one person and $40 for the family can be made.

One of the visitors Monday was Shinya Yamada, of Tokyo, who stood before a 9/11 artifact -- a piece of one of the planes -- and shook his head. Yamada lived in SoHo 12 years ago -- this was his first time back since 9/11.

"Every Saturday, I came to the coffee shop in tower one or two, I don't remember which one now, I bought vanilla almond coffee beans."

In one gallery, a list with small black type displays the names of the victims in the flights, the towers and the Pentagon.

You have to stand back or sit down on a bench to fully comprehend it.

Brady and Sandra Kuhn traveled from Indianapolis, with their 5-month-old daughter. Sandra stood before the enormous list. "This list is long, it's just too long," she says, "I think back to the Vietnam memorial and the list of all their names."

John Salvatore Salerno Sr. has one of the volunteers help him find his son's name John Salvatore Salerno Jr., a stockbroker.

He bends down, running his fingers on the letters and walks away.

"The only word I have to describe it is unbelievable, it feels like an illusion," Salerno said.