Visitors who come here expect to not just see the 168 empty chairs that are the centerpiece of the Oklahoma City National Memorial but to interact with them–to walk up to them, to sit on them, to leave a tribute, a red rose perhaps, on one of them. So it is something of a shock to encounter black plastic chains that cordon off the chairs and the grass around them.
The architects of the memorial, including Hans-Ekkehard Butzer, who grew up in the Chicago suburb of Flossmoor, had intended for the chairs to be accessible to visitors. But that was before hordes of tourists–far more than the architects anticipated– trampled the grass after the memorial opened on April 19, 2000, the fifth anniversary of the bombing that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building. Soon after, the heavy plastic chains went up. The alternative, say memorial executives, was to have a hallowed national site turn into a field of mud.
“The chains are not the design intent. Our hope was that we could have interaction all the time,” said Kari Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the private foundation that built the memorial and operates it.
But, she added, “Between strollers, wheelchairs and families pulling kids in wagons, it made it hard for us to ever grow grass.”
Barricade to feeling
That may be true, but the chains severely compromise the emotional power of what was supposed to be an interactive memorial. The message of the chains is clear: Don’t cross. So people don’t. And the damage wrought by this relatively simple step turns out to be much greater.
The chains alter the perception of both the chairs and the field of grass around them. The chairs become more like tombstones, objects you are not supposed to engage. The field of grass, which reproduces the long, rectangular footprint of the destroyed Murrah building, is transformed into something like a cemetery.
Imagine how different the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would feel if visitors were not allowed to reach out and touch the names on its black granite walls and you have a sense of the passion that has been squelched here.
This is not to say that the memorial, which was designed by Butzer, his wife, Torrey, and German native Sven Berg, has been completely undercut. It remains a dignified, sometimes moving space, especially at night, when the glass base of the chairs is lit from within and takes on an ethereal glow that suggests souls released from earthly torment.
Located on the north side of downtown Oklahoma City, a short walk from the city’s cluster of skyscrapers, the memorial occupies a blocklong site that incorporates a closed street where Timothy McVeigh parked the truck bomb that ripped apart the Murrah building at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995.
At each end of the block stand bronze gates inscribed “9:01” and “9:03”–the minutes before and after the explosion. Between them is shallow, black granite reflecting pool. On each side of the pool are contrasting symbols of loss and renewal–the field of empty chairs, arranged in nine rows to represent the nine floors of the Murrah building; and, opposite it, an orchard, terraces and a “survivor tree” that was severely damaged in the blast but lived.
Though the memorial lacks the singular gesture of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial’s gouge in the earth, it nonetheless has its stirring moments.
The chairs, each of which has a bronze back and a granite seat, are handsome tributes, even if they too obviously suggest office workers sitting at their desks. The reflecting pool, three-quarters of an inch deep, slides across the site like a mirror, a calm refuge from stormy waters. The bronze gates are not just well proportioned, but they firmly establish the memorial as a sacred precinct, where visitors can come to remember and to heal.
Victims denied identity
The trouble is, the healing is hampered by the presence of the chains and the absence of interaction that the chairs were supposed to provide. Without that, the memorial is robbed of its emotional core, and the whole, which relies heavily on the contrast between mourning and regeneration, is less than the sum of its parts. Worse, nearly all of the victims are robbed of their individual identity.
Because of the chains, visitors can walk only in front of the first row of chairs rather than amid all of them. They thus can only see the victims’ names inscribed on the chairs in one, at most two, rows. That renders the victims an anonymous group rather than individuals.
Watkins pointed out that the chains are taken down for major holidays. Visitors also can ask a guard of a park ranger to escort them to the chairs, she said. But the absence of signs indicating that alternative means that most don’t ask.
Perhaps declining attendance–the result of the memorial losing its novelty and the byproduct of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that made New York the site of the worst terrorist act on American soil–will help.
In the spring, Watkins said, she may leave the chains down for two weeks and test the durability of the wear-resistant grass that replaced the initial, trampled grass. That would be a step in the right direction. For the chains create a less-than-ideal trade-off: A memorial that remains well-groomed but fails to attain the emotional resonance its designers intended and the nation deserves.
