Empty Sky (memorial)
sculpture; official New Jersey September 11 memorial
Empty Sky is the official New Jersey September 11 memorial to the state's victims of the September 11 attacks on the United States. It is located in Liberty State Park in Jersey City at the mouth of the Hudson River across from the World Trade Center site. It was designed by Jessica Jamroz and Frederic Schwartz and dedicated on Saturday, September 10, 2011, a day before the tenth anniversary of the attacks.
Design
The design was chosen by the vote of the Families and Survivors Memorial Committee, out of 320 qualified entries in the international design competition. The memorial is dedicated to 746 New Jerseyans killed in the World Trade Center in 1993 and in the September 11 attacks, as well as those who died at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation has stated that the goal of this memorial is to "reflect the legacies of those whose lives were lost, that their unfulfilled dreams and hopes may result in a better future for society. Their unique qualities and characteristics enriched our lives immeasurably and through this memorial, their stories live on."
The memorial includes twin walls, transecting a "gently sloped mound anchored by a granite path that is directed toward Ground Zero. Two 30-foot (9.1 m)-high rectangular towers stretch 208 feet 10 inches (63.65 m) long—the exact width of the World Trade Center towers; the height of the walls is proportionate to the length to represent the buildings as if they were lying on their sides. The name of each of the 746 victims is etched in stainless steel in 4-inch (10 cm) letters. A granite passage is oriented to face the site of the World Trade Center.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Empty Sky (memorial)” is sculpture; official New Jersey September 11 memorial. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Empty, memorial and sculpture, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5374723. Authority coordinates are 40.708, -74.035. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Empty Sky (memorial)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.