Oklahoma City National Memorial

After seeing the memorials Mr. Birchett showed us in class I started to think about other memorials that were around the United States. I remembered the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. This means a lot to me because I remember the day that the Murrah Building was bombed in Oklahoma City and I remember how interested I was in the whole event. I would love to one day go visit this elaborate memorial because it was crafted so wonderful and has so much power and meaning. Above is an over view of the whole memorial. The memorial was created by Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg a Butzer Design Partnership. They won a contest and then 3 years later this beautiful masterpiece was created.

Here is a photo of one of the two gates at the ends of the reflecting pool. This one reads 9:03 while the other reads 9:01 symbolizing the middle time of 9:02 when the explosion happened. I love the lighting and the meaning these gates bring to the memorial.

To the right you can see the reflecting pool that lies in between the two gates and is the focal point in the middle of the memorial. This pool brings calming and relaxing feelings to the scene showing that in a state of chaos and devastation there can still be time for relaxation and reflection. I love when pools are integrated into memorials because, although artificial, they bring a sense of earth and movement into the piece of art.

This image in my opinion is the most powerful. Here there are 168 chairs with victim's names on them arranged in nine rows representing the nine floor of the building. There are also19 smaller chairs representing the children that lost their lives. This is called the Field of Chairs because the chairs are located in an empty field to the right of the reflecting pool.

This is the Survivor Tree. This American Elm survived the bombing and is still alive today. This tree is a symbol of life and triumph in a time of despair. I love how the designers used this tree as a focal point of the memorial as opposed to tearing it down. This is a true integration of earth and man proving to be a magnificent piece of earth art.

This is the Survivor Wall where over 600 names of survivors are inscribed into the granite. This is the only remaining wall left from the Murrah building. I also appreciate how the designers left this one wall from the lobby to use another focal point and a remembrance of what was there.


This is the Rescuers' Orchard where there are many trees representing the people that came to help during this time of need. The trees surround the Survivor Tree showing a direct interaction between the trees. Also there is an inscription at the Survivor Tree that looks toward the orchard and reads: To the courageous and caring who responded from near and far, we offer our eternal gratitude, as a thank you to the thousands of rescuers and volunteers who helped.

The Children's Area is special due to the amount of children that were actually killed during the blast and the response from other children around the world. The area is made up of tiles that were painted by children and sent to Oklahoma City. There are also chalkboards and chalk that can be used by children to write or draw messages.

The last element to the memorial is the Fence. This is an area that once put up to protect the site, almost immediately people came to show their love and respect. There are over 60,000 items that have been collected from the fence.