Tribute in Light


The Tribute in Light is a temporary art installation of 88 searchlights
placed next to the site of the World Trade Center to create two vertical
columns of light in remembrance of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack
from March 11 to April 14, 2002.

The various people who ended up working together on the project
simultaneously came up with idea in the week following the attack.

Architects John Bennett and Gustavo Bonevardi of PROUN Space Studio
distributed their "Project for the Immediate Reconstruction of Manhattan's Skyline".

Artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda, who before September 11 were
working on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center north tower on a
proposed light scupture on the giant radio antenna with Creative Time,
conceived the project "Phantom Towers", and were commissioned by The New
York Times Magazine an image of the project for its September 23 cover.

Richard Nash Gould, a New York architect, went to the Municipal Art Society
with the concept. On September 19, chairman Philip K. Howard wrote to Mayor
Rudy Giuliani, asking him "to consider placing two large searchlights near
the disaster site, projecting their light straight up into the sky."

The project was originally going to be named Towers of Light until some
people complained that emphasized the building destroyed instead of the
people killed.