Twenty-five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the memory of that terrible day lives on in thousands of places across the country — from grand national memorials to quiet neighborhood tributes.
Some sit where the planes fell. Others stand hundreds or even thousands of miles away, built by communities determined to remember the people they lost and the first responders who answered the call.
The memorials may be scattered from New York to Arizona to Kansas, but Sal Lifrieri, a former NYPD detective who served as director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management during the 9/11 attacks, said the distance doesn’t make the tragedy any less personal.
“You can’t go anywhere in the world without coming in contact or knowing someone that was affected — had a family member, relative or friend — that was touched by 9/11,” Lifrieri told The Post.
The memorials aren’t simply relics of a tragedy frozen in 2001. Lifrieri sees them as part of an American tradition of remembrance.
“The 9/11 attacks were this generation’s Pearl Harbor and and these remembrances are important — the ceremony is a reminder of our vulnerability during the attack,” he said.
New York urban painter and muralist Tom Christopher told The Post that the most effective memorials don’t let the sheer scale of 9/11 overwhelm the people behind the numbers.
“A meaningful memorial has to make something enormous feel human again,” he said.
“Twenty-five years later, the numbers and images are part of history, but behind every number was a person who had a family, a routine, a favorite restaurant, a train they took to work.”
Here are 25 memorials across the nation to know:
1. National September 11 Memorial & Museum — New York City
The most visited 9/11 memorial sits where the Twin Towers once stood with two enormous reflecting pools occupying their footprints and the names of every victim etched into bronze surrounding them.
Designed by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, the nearly eight-acre plaza also contains hundreds of swamp white oak trees and the famous Survivor Tree — a Callery pear that endured the attacks and was nursed back to health before being returned to the site.
Below ground, the museum preserves artifacts and personal stories that document not only the attacks but their staggering aftermath.
2. Flight 93 National Memorial — Shanksville, Pennsylvania
A quiet Pennsylvania field marks the final resting place of the 40 passengers and crew members who fought back against their hijackers on Sept. 11, preventing United Flight 93 from ever reaching Washington, DC.
The memorial’s sweeping landscape leads visitors toward the crash site, while 40 white marble panels honor each person aboard the plane.
A 93-foot-tall Tower of Voices contains 40 wind chimes — one for each life lost.
3. Pentagon Memorial — Arlington, Virginia
At the Pentagon, 184 individual memorial units honor everyone killed when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Department of Defense headquarters, just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.
Each stainless-steel bench at the space bears a victim’s or — in the case of married couples or parents and children — family’s name and faces either the Pentagon or the direction of the flight, depending on where the lives were lost. (Fifty-nine crew members and passengers perished, while another 125 military workers and civilians died at the Pentagon.)
A curved wall rises from just 3 inches to 71 inches — representing the ages of the youngest and oldest victims — while shallow pools beneath the benches catch the light.
4. Eagle Rock Reservation 9/11 Memorial — West Orange, New Jersey
Lookout Point at the Eagle Rock Reservation has long been considered one of the best places on the west side of the Hudson River to admire the Manhattan skyline. And after the planes hit the World Trade Center, people gathered along the cliffside there to watch in shock.
Now, a memorial at the Essex County site features a granite wall bearing the names of nearly 3,000 victims, along with bronze sculptures honoring police officers, firefighters and search-and-rescue dogs.
But perhaps its most poignant feature is the view. In 2021, Essex County Executive Joe Divincenzo told WABC: “I heard 40% of the people haven’t been identified that actually died. So people actually come out here, this is the only place they have. They don’t have a cemetery to go to. They come here and remember.”
5. Empty Sky Memorial — Jersey City, New Jersey
Across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan, the Garden State’s official 9/11 memorial makes the absence of the Twin Towers impossible to miss.
Two parallel stainless-steel walls stretch 210 feet long and 30 feet high and mirror the shape and orientation of the buildings.
A granite walkway runs directly between them toward the World Trade Center site, while the walls are etched with the names of the 749 New Jersey residents killed either on that day or in the 1993 bombing of the parking garage beneath the North Tower.
6. Connecticut’s 9/11 Living Memorial — Sherwood Island State Park, Westport, Connecticut
On Sept. 11, 2001, people at Sherwood Island could see the smoke rising from Lower Manhattan across Long Island Sound.
The park quickly became Connecticut’s staging area for emergency relief efforts headed to New York.
Today, its official 9/11 Living Memorial honors 161 victims of the attacks who resided in or had ties to the Constitution State.
A polished granite stone overlooking the water serves as a quiet reminder of those lives— and of the commuter state’s proximity to the tragedy.
7. Postcards Memorial — Staten Island, New York
Standing between the two structures on the borough’s North Shore Waterfront Esplanade — near the St. George Ferry Terminal, where so many Staten Island residents commute to and from Manhattan — you understand why the memorial by architect Masayuki Sono is called “Postcards.”
From that angle, they are like two giant postcards. Each displays carved silhouette likenesses of the 274 people from Staten Island who were killed in the 2001 attacks (including retired cab driver John Talignani of New Dorp, who was on United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania) and the 1993 World Trade Center garage bombing.
But standing further back from the memorial facing toward Manhattan, as those silhouettes do, you see how the structures are bent slightly, like wings in flight.
8. Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance — Coney Island, Brooklyn
Maimonides Park is not only the home of the Brooklyn Cyclones, but also the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance, which spans the exterior of the stadium and features laser-engraved portraits of perished heroes — all grouped with their respective companies.
In fact, it’s actually three walls and includes bronze reliefs honoring 346 firefighters, 37 Port Authority officers, 23 NYC police officers, 3 NYS officers, 1 fire patrol, first responders, and Sirius, a K-9 rescue dog who died alongside his handler, Port Authority Police Officer David Lim.
9. Father Mychal Judge Walk of Remembrance — Manhattan
Rather than a monument you simply visit, the Father Mychal Judge Walk of Remembrance asks people to walk each September 11.
The three-mile procession honors Father Mychal Judge, the FDNY chaplain who died while ministering to firefighters at Ground Zero and who was the first officially recorded fatality of the attacks.
The route begins at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street and ends at St. Peter’s Church downtown, with participants pause and pray at fire stations and precincts for both the NYPD and Port Authority.
10. FDNY World Trade Center Retired Responders Memorial Wall — Brooklyn
Dedicated in June 2026, this new memorial in Downtown Brooklyn underscores a painful reality that continues a quarter-century later: The death toll of 9/11 did not end when the towers fell.
A remarkable number of retired FDNY firefighters and EMS personnel jumped in to assist with the rescue and recovery effort at Ground Zero, and 154 of them who later died from illnesses linked to their service are honored here.
“It’s my privilege to welcome you home today,” Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said at the recent dedication ceremony for the new memorial, which stands across from a wall honoring active-duty FDNY members lost to WTC-related illnesses.
11. 9/11 Memorial of Kansas — Anthony, Kansas
Smaller tributes — like this one in a farming community — located thousands of miles from Ground Zero aren’t as well-known, but serve as powerful reminders of how the entire US was rocked by the tragedy of 25 years ago.
Residents of Anthony wanted to do something to help in the months after 9/11, leading to the then-mayor connecting with Engine 88, Ladder Company 38, in The Bronx. From there, the town ended up “adopting” the family of Joe Spor, a firefighter who lost his life on 9/11, leaving behind a wife and four kids ranging in age from 6 months to 6 years old.
Later, when the town expressed interest in constructing a memorial, they found out they could claim a piece of steel from the towers’ wreckage — if they could pick it up from Brooklyn in four days. A local hardware store owner got in touch with the corporate offices of True Value, who got it from New York City to Anthony.
12. Arizona 9/11 Memorial — Phoenix, Arizona
This stunning piece, known as “Moving Memories,” has not been without controversy over the years. After it opened in 2006, there were complaints that some inscriptions — pulled from news clippings — were too political and even critical of the United States, prompting a yearslong battle over what a memorial should be.
The designers “wanted to provoke thought and discussion, where most Arizona residents expected a straight memorial where you come to remember, meditate, to pray,” John Kavanagh, a Republican and Arizona State Senator who is also a former Port Authority police officer, has said.. “There lies the root of the problem.”
Eventually, the Arizona state legislature passed a bill mandating changes to the memorial. As the sun moves over the circular structure, cut-out words are projected onto the concrete below, changing throughout the day: clear and sharp noontime and fading as the day goes on.
13. Gilbert 9/11 Memorial — Gilbert, Arizona
You can actually touch a piece of the Twin Towers at this Arizona memorial, where a structural beam recovered from the North Tower gives visitors a tangible connection to the buildings that once defined the New York skyline.
The tribute offers a quiet place to pause and remember, thousands of miles from where the attacks happened.
“A piece of World Trade Center steel is not an abstraction. You can stand beside it and understand that this object physically occupied that place on that morning,” artist Christopher said.
14. California 9/11 Memorial — Clovis, California
One of the country’s largest 9/11 memorials outside New York sits in an impressive park in California’s Central Valley region.
The Clovis memorial features several story plaques as well as miniature replicas of the Twin Towers engraved with the names of fallen first responders and military personnel, along with a Pentagon-inspired fountain bearing the names of those killed at that location.
Among the four bronze statues honoring heroes is one depicting the NYPD’s Moira Smith, the first officer to report the terrorist attack and who helped lead hundreds of people to safety before she died in the towers’ collapse.
A 110-foot flagpole represents the 110 stories of the Twin Towers, while a descendant of the Survivor Tree — the Callary pear that was saved from Ground Zero — grows on the grounds.
Even the sun plays a role as, depending on the time of year, carefully designed shadows fall across the memorial’s sculptures and Pentagon replica to correspond with the plane strikes.
15. La Quinta 9/11 Memorial — La Quinta, California
What began as a teenager’s Eagle Scout project ultimately became a permanent piece of Sept. 11 history in the California desert.
The La Quinta 9/11 Memorial, dedicated in 2013, contains an actual piece of structural steel recovered from the World Trade Center — which was donated after scout Andrew Davis reached out to the Port Authority. He also raised more than $15,000 through fundraisers and T-shirt sales as well as another $32,000 by appealing directly to donors including tennis great Novak Djokovic.
16. Massachusetts 9/11 Memorial — Battleship Cove, Fall River, Massachusetts
Not far from the Rhode Island border, this Massachusetts tribute comes with an unusually powerful backdrop: a historic battleship, the USS Massachusetts, that is the site of an 21-gun salute.
Honoring the 91 state residents killed in the attacks, it includes a stirring inscription reading in part: “None of us will ever forget where we were on September 11, 2001. The images of that day will haunt us forever. But the images of fire and smoke, of twisted metal and panic in the streets are not the only ones we will remember. We will also remember the determined faces of the firefighters and police officers racing up the stairwells of the World Trade Center to help those trapped above. We will remember construction workers, coated in ash, searching by hand for survivors as the skeletons of skyscrapers leaned perilously above them … “
17. Ohio Statehouse 9/11 Memorial — Columbus, Ohio
For a few days every September (this year, through September 14), the lawn of the Ohio Statehouse is taken over by 2,977 American flags — one for each person killed in the Sept. 11 attacks — that are arranged to represent the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania field where Flight 93 crashed.
18. Quincy 9/11 Memorial — Quincy, Illinois
A twisted, 15-foot piece of the World Trade Center found a surprisingly personal home at at Mississippi River town’s city hall.
1WTC’s communications tower, including an antenna used to broadcast television signals across the New York City area, was designed and manufactured in Quincy, Illinois, by the Harris Corporation. Employees of Harris worked with NYC broadcasters to quickly get stations back on the air after the North Tower was hit, transmitting to alternate sky-high locations including the Empire State Building.
19. Decatur 9/11 Memorial — Decatur, Illinois
In 2024, vandals stole part of this lakeside remembrance: a crushed filing cabinet from one of the World Trade Center towers that was melted onto an I-beam at the site on 9/11.
“It’s a pretty simple piece of twisted metal,” Decatur resident John Daum told the town’s WCIA TV after the piece went missing. “But we all know what it meant. Someone could have been at that file cabinet when the planes struck.”
But earlier this year, a drought in Central Illinois greatly lowered water levels and revealed the artifact, which has since been restored at the site, alongside a piece of Flight 93, the United jet that crashed in Pennsylvania.
20. Shiloh 9/11 Memorial — Shiloh, Illinois
It’s interesting to see how different communities and artists come up with ways to convey the familiar themes of place that symbolize the 9/11 attacks.
Conceived by local resident Wes Kern and designed by community volunteer Doug Karius, this remembrance reflects how a national tragedy was seen through the lens of a small suburb of St. Louis.
A five-sided brick base suggests the Pentagon, with lights on either side standing in for the Twin Towers. Landscaping around the space represents the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, field where United Flight 93 went down after passengers fought back against hijackers.
21. Danbury 9/11 Memorial — Danbury, Connecticut
While so many tributes honor 9/11 with steel — including beams or other infrastructure salvaged from the towers — this memorial in Connecticut, where 152 residents were lost, is unusual in that it employs 6,000 pounds of glass.
The 12-foot illuminated tower, created by sculptor Henry Richardson, is made from layers of glass surrounding a hollow center that serves as an intentional representation of the absence left by the Twin Towers.
Mounted on Connecticut granite, the monument bears the names of the state’s 152 victims, with locals’ names placed at eye level.
22. Palos Heights 9/11 & Veterans Memorial — Palos Heights, Illinois
In this Chicago suburb, the memory of 9/11 is intertwined with another kind of sacrifice: military service.
The memorial beside Palos Heights’ City Hall uses twin structures to evoke the World Trade Center towers, with a sculptural representation of the Pentagon nestled between them.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the town is adding a monument specifically honoring first responders who died that day, featuring a polished granite slab etched with illustrations of a firefighter’s helmet, police hat and firefighters beneath an American flag.
23. The Rising — Kensico Dam Plaza, Westchester County, New York
Westchester’s official 9/11 memorial reaches some 80 feet skyward, with steel strands — representing the 110 county residents killed in the attacks — forming an unbroken circle.
Known as The Rising, the monument at Kensico Dam Plaza also honors neighbors who later died from 9/11-related illnesses, and the base bears all their names alongside words from people who loved them.
Designed by architect Frederic Schwartz and named after Bruce Springsteen’s post-9/11 anthem, the sculpture’s reflective surface appears to change seasonally and throughout the day, depending on the light.
“Memorials like that remind us that the tragedy extended outward from Lower Manhattan into families and communities throughout the region,” Christopher said, adding that it’s his favorite 9/11 memorial that he’s visited.
24. September 11, 2001, Monument — Texas State Cemetery, Austin, Texas
Visitors are encouraged to reach out and touch these two massive steel columns that now stand in the Texas State Cemetery in that state’s capital.
The roughly 1,400-pound columns were recovered from the World Trade Center and incorporated into a memorial commissioned by then-Gov. Rick Perry in 2002 and unveiled the following year.
A timeline recounting the events of Sept. 11 accompanies the monument, which honors Texans killed on that day as well those who served in Operation Enduring Freedom, the combat mission in Afghanistan that was a direct result of the attacks.
A salvaged piece of the World Trade Center made an extraordinary journey from New York to its permanent home in a Dallas suburb.
The steel traveled more than 1,500 miles from New York — transported by ambulance with an honor guard escort — before being installed at Firehouse No. 4.
It now sits atop a red strip that represents the “thin red line” of firefighter courage, surrounded by four trees that symbolize the hijacked planes and five limestone benches representing the branches of the US military.
Even the dimensions carry meaning. The sum total length of the benches is 343, which is the number of FDNY firefighters who perished on Sept. 11, 2011. One walkway sits 9 feet, 11 inches from the steel, while the distance to a second is 102 inches — the number of minutes between the first plane strike and the second tower falling.
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