Influential Sphere

Koenig’s Sphere was always a stop on the itinerary whenever I was tooling around downtown Manhattan for whatever reason, houseguest tourism included. It was in the plaza between the twin towers and it was a perfect choice for that space. Although it was bent and battered during the disaster of 9/11 it somehow survived intact. It was put in storage for a while and then was reinstalled in Liberty Park, a site about four blocks south of the World Trade Center and, in the interim, it has become a tourist (and homeboy) landmark and destination in and of itself. Despite a public outcry to include it within the new WTC memorial the powers-that-be rejected its inclusion for, to me, weird and obscure reasons. The Sept. 11 memorial/museum President Joe Daniels says it “infringes upon the integrity of the memorial design” although how that’s possible is beyond my understanding. But, yet again, the public-be-damned. Perhaps an effigy of Mr. Daniels could be burned in its place.

Whatever the reasoning, Koenig’s Sphere should be on display, if not as part of the official memorial, but as close to its original location as possible. But even that is not to be. Because of renovations to Liberty Park it is now scheduled to go back into storage for who knows how long and there seems to be no plans to return it to the Park or anywhere else. This decision totally sucks.