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9/11 Tribute Museum expands space for personal stories

A museum that tells the stories of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks will reopen Tuesday in a new space, a little farther from the World Trade Center memorial but with triple the exhibition space of the temporary quarters it occupied for a decade.

The 9/11 Tribute Museum was originally founded in 2006 as a temporary shrine to the victims in the years that the larger, better known National September 11 Memorial and Museum was under construction and even after it opened in 2011.

The Tribute Museum offered daily guided tours of the rebuilt World Trade Center site led by people with close personal connections to the tragedy, including attack survivors, first responders, recovery workers and relatives of the dead.

More than 4 million people have visited the museum, originally called the Tribute Center and co-founded by CEO Jennifer Adams-Webb and the September 11th Families' Association, causing it to outgrow its original home in a space formerly occupied by a delicatessen.

The new space, a few blocks away, is 36,000 square-feet, about half of which is exhibition space. It is located on the ground and second floors of a high-rise building.

"Originally, when we started, we weren't sure where we were going," said Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son, Jonathan, died in the attacks. "We realized, as the years went on, that we are making an impact."

Artifacts on display at the museum include "missing persons" posters that were hung throughout the city in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, when families still held hope that their loved ones would be found alive. Other items on display include a death certificate, a boarding pass for someone who was on one of the flights, and a section of window from one of the hijacked planes.

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http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...from-the-world