The Pentagon, headquarters of the US Department of Defense, was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building, killing 125 people. The Pentagon Memorial, costing $22 million, was unveiled seven years later, featuring 184 benches with names of the victims, organized by age and date of birth. The park-like area is open to the public year-round and admission is free. The memorial is reflective and includes soft lighting and leafy maple trees. Photography is allowed inside the memorial.
The Pentagon is a building complex in Washington, DC that is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. Terrorists attacked the building on September 11, 2001, when it crashed into a hijacked passenger plane. The Pentagon Memorial was unveiled exactly seven years later, to represent the memory of those who died on the plane and in the Pentagon that day. Each person has a bench with their name, organized by age and date of birth in a park-like setting on the western side of the Pentagon building itself.
The hijackers gained control of four planes on September 11, 2001, with the express intention of destroying the buildings with the planes. Two of the planes hit the World Trade Center towers, killing thousands in New York City. Another plane, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon. The passengers of the last plane, which the hijackers were probably trying to get into the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, learned of the other terrorist attacks and tried to regain control of the plane before it reached the city, but the plane crashed while attempting.
American Airlines Flight 77 consisted of six people and had 58 passengers. Five of those passengers were hijackers. When the plane crashed into the west side of the Pentagon building, 125 people who were in the building died. The Pentagon Memorial is dedicated to all the innocent people who died that day.
On the west side of the Pentagon building is now a park-like area of about 2 acres (about 0.8 hectares). Pentagon Memorial designers Keith Kasemen and Julie Beckman included components such as soft lighting and leafy maple trees to make the park a reflective place. It cost $22 million US dollars (USD) and was officially dedicated on September 11, 2008.
Inside the Pentagon Memorial are 184 benches, each named after a person. The benches stand on a pool of light when the sun goes down. The placement of each bench also reflects the date of birth of the individual persons. Since the youngest person to die in the crash was a three-year-old girl, her bench is at the far end of the memorial, and next is her sister’s bench, because she was eight years old.
The individual memorial of each person is then found further on, in order of age and date of birth. The last bench is in memory of a 71-year-old man, a retired US Navy Captain, who was an airplane passenger. The boundary wall starts 3 inches (about 76 cm) high at one end and rises 71 inches (about 5.9 feet) at the other to reflect this.
When a visitor looks at all of the benches on the memorial, those for people who were passengers on the plane face one way and the memorials for Pentagon workers face the other way. Even a close look at the names engraved on the benches reflects this. To look at the names of people who died in the Pentagon, a visitor must look at the building itself, and when he reads the names of people who were on the plane, he also sees the sky.
Open to the public around the clock, year-round, admission to the Pentagon Memorial is free. Although the rest of the Pentagon area is off-limits for visitors and photography, photography is permitted inside the memorial. Parking is available and the Metro and buses also provide transport links.
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