National September 11 Memorial & MuseumLower Manhattan
Our Flag Was Still There
Historic American flags tied to 9/11, including the Ground Zero Flag, paired with personal stories in Foundation Hall to mark the nation's 250th anniversary.
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One of the flags here went on the bin Laden raid tucked into a Chinook pilot's flight gear. It now carries a handwritten line, "5/1/11 Geronimo 'NS'", the code words that signalled the mission had succeeded.
The installation is in Foundation Hall and is built around four flags. You stand in the hall with the Last Column, the 36-foot steel remnant of the South Tower, and the flag that flew over it through the nine months of recovery is part of the show. So is the flag FDNY firefighters raised on the afternoon of 9/11, the one in Tom Franklin's photograph, and the Garrison flag that soldiers hung down the side of the Pentagon on September 12. Press photographs and first-person stories, such as FDNY Captain Michael Dugan's, fill in the rest.
It comes with museum admission ($24 to $36, or free on Mondays from 5:30 to 7pm, tickets released online that morning). Last entry is an hour before the 7pm close. On view through February 2028.
Look for
The Bin Laden Raid flag
Look for the handwritten "5/1/11 Geronimo 'NS'" on the flag a lead Chinook pilot carried tucked into his flight gear on the 2011 raid.
The Ground Zero Flag
The flag in Tom Franklin's photograph, shown with the 2002 USPS stamps and medals that reproduced the image, and the story of how it went from a yacht at a nearby marina to this museum.
The Pentagon's Garrison flag
A Garrison flag, the largest official U.S. flag, which soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment and Arlington firefighters draped over the side of the Pentagon on September 12, 2001.
The Last Column flag
The flag raised over the 36-foot South Tower column that still stands in Foundation Hall, there until the column was removed on May 30, 2002 to mark the end of recovery.
Good for
- First-Timers
- Out-Of-Town Guests
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Image credits
4
- Splendido, As Seen by Chris RhodesCourtesy of Aperture
- Pierre Huyghe: UUmweltCourtesy of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the SensesRhododendrites / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National September 11 Memorial & MuseumPaul Sableman, CC BY 2.0