Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Strip now home to 9-11 tribute

New York-New York's latest addition wasn't unveiled with a crowd of reporters or photographers on hand or even trumpeted with a press conference.

In fact, no official announcement has yet been made about the opening of the addition at the southeast corner of the resort at Tropicana Avenue and the Las Vegas Strip, one of the busiest intersections in the city.

What greeted unsuspecting tourists last month wasn't the usual flash and dash Las Vegas is known for -- but a sober tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In a thick glass case bent upward to the sun and near a replica of the Statue of Liberty, a T-shirt with these words scrawled upon it catches the eye: "To my Joe -- thank you for being the best husband. I'll love you always, Sandy." In another case, an Iron Workers International Union shirt bears the message: "Let's build this nation stronger." Nearby, a wedding photo is accompanied by a picture of a little girl wearing a shirt that reads, "Daddy, our hero."

These are among the items that began piling up along the fence outside the resort almost immediately after the attacks, transforming the casino's exterior into an impromptu shrine for the people who died in the worst act of terrorism in the United States. As the mementos grew, resort owner MGM MIRAGE said it was faced with designing an addition that wasn't driven by profits.

"This was almost a calling. We felt we had no choice," said Felix Rappaport, president of New York-New York.

The hotel plans no fanfare for the memorial, which is free to the public and located on the Strip sidewalk, to avoid the appearance of self-promotion. Company executives call the site a "tribute" so as not to compare it to official government monuments to fallen heroes.

The company declined to reveal the cost of the project.

The memorial consists of a granite wall with 20 recessed boxes of mementos. In between, brass plates display quotations from inspirational figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nelson Mandela.

Many of the tourists who passed in front of the resort last week said they were surprised by the result.

"This is tasteful, not like some of the things I've seen in New York," said Sheryl Hall of Detroit. "I think this did a lot of good."

"I'm speechless," said Jason Cox of Richmond, Ind., who saw piles of the objects during his trip to Las Vegas last year. "It's wonderful what they've done."

The exhibit brought an emotional response from Marilyn Bucich and her companion Tom Byrnes, both from Brooklyn.

"We know people who lost their lives," Bucich said. "We shouldn't forget it and put it away in the archives. This is the proper thing to do to acknowledge the loss."

It is only one piece of a larger preservation effort.

The rest of the mementos not on display -- including some 4,000 or so T-shirts -- now sit in the basement of the Lied Library at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where they have been meticulously archived and placed into acid-free boxes.

The items will be periodically rotated out from storage into the display boxes at New York-New York. New items that are left at the site will be archived at UNLV, then returned, for future display at the resort.

David Schwartz, coordinator of UNLV's Gaming Studies Research Center, is responsible for curating the exhibit. The partnership with the company and the scale of the archives is "unprecedented," he said.

"It's very commendable when anyone in the industry steps back and does anything like this," Schwartz said. "The casino industry is revenue-driven."

MGM MIRAGE says the memorial eventually became a necessity as a way to preserve a rapidly growing pile of tear-stained shirts and expressions of love and pain.

"We think it would have been irresponsible to take all those personal relics and stick them in a box somewhere, never to be seen again," Rappaport said. "When you see T-shirts that are 12 to 13 deep on a fence, someone is trying to tell you something."

The New York State Museum in Albany offered the first permanent museum exhibition of Sept. 11 artifacts, including mementos left at Ground Zero, pieces of the World Trade Center and items found in the debris. The museum has also received a significant number of mementos as donations from businesses.

But it's unusual for a business to display such objects on its own turf, museum officials said.

"Some certainly displayed them initially as the public brought them forward, but they then turned to collecting institutions for stewardship," museum spokeswoman Joanne Guilmette said. "This also prevents the perception of exploitative use of the objects."

Museum Director Clifford Siegfried said the New York-New York exhibit appears tasteful.

"The objects are being treated as historic objects and treated with respect," he said. "It's important that the objects left in Vegas also be preserved for future generations. They should be available for scholars as well as for public exhibition."

That a reverential space has been carved out in a city known for superficial glitz and glitter isn't as as strange as it sounds.

Many New York-New York customers are people who have never been to New York and view the neon-speckled replica as their only link to the city where the tragedy occurred, Rappaport said.

"Many people lived through that only through CNN and the media," he said.

Las Vegas is among the most-traveled tourist destinations in the United States, with more than 35 million visitors last year, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Still, MGM MIRAGE officials say they were "amazed" at the reaction after Sept. 11.

"There were T-shirts, caps, patches, poems being brought from all over the country and the world," said Tom McCartney, senior vice president of marketing and development at New York-New York. "We realized that we wanted to preserve these items out of respect and for the memory of those who placed them and those they were placed for."

Before New Year's Eve 2001, hotel staff took the shirts and items down from the fence so that revelers wouldn't destroy or disturb them. The resort did the same thing last year. But this time around, each item was photographed with a digital camera -- front and back -- before it was placed back at the fence. A description of each item, including the writing on each T-shirt, also was noted. The items were then shipped to UNLV for storage while the memorial was built. As new mementos collect at the tribute, they are trucked over to UNLV to archive.

MGM MIRAGE has paid for the services of a UNLV student to archive the material as well as for boxes and other associated costs.

Schwartz is donating his time to oversee the process.

"There are costs associated with any kind of preservation effort," Schwartz said. "I was very impressed that they were doing something like this."

The idea for the memorial ultimately came from McCartney, who worked for MGM MIRAGE's predecessor MGM Grand Inc. when it and a partner built New York-New York and has perhaps the greatest longevity in senior management at the property. He is also responsible for capital projects and construction.

The idea of preservation is incorporated into the memorial, McCartney said.

"We wanted to focus on the items placed there more than building a memorial that had some significant architectural comment to it."

In other words, in very un-Vegas fashion, there would be no statues of firefighters, replicas of the Twin Towers or majestic structures.

Casino developer and builder Marnell Corrao Associates, which built the Bellagio and several other the resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, created the tribute.

The company traveled to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington and the Oklahoma City bombing memorial to get ideas.

"If it feels right, we're not afraid to step out there," Rappaport said. "We're not afraid to lead the pack."

International Association of Fire Fighters, the union that represents firefighters nationwide and one of the most represented rescue and safety groups at Ground Zero, has given the project its blessing.

"The IAFF has supported this project since it was conceived by New York-New York," said Harold Schaitberger, the union's president. "We think it is an appropriate and respectful tribute."

Many of the T-shirts at the site featured the well-known Maltese cross of the firefighters' union and were left by fire stations and their supporters nationwide.

"Given that Las Vegas is a crossroads of the world, we are proud that this permanent tribute to our fallen heroes will be viewed by millions of people for years to come," Schaitberger said.

Eventually, New York-New-York expects to offer kiosks inside the resort where visitors can view digital photos of the mementos organized by state and city.

Schwartz says he expects to pursue more outreach projects with casinos to archive their past and hopes the project will inspire other Las Vegas resorts to do the same.

"That's one of the reasons I took this on," Schwartz said. "This is the kind of thing I want to do with other casino companies to preserve their history."

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