Memorial drive: Local artist still searching for a home for 9/11 sculpture

Nine years ago this weekend, on September 11, 2001, Greenwich sculptor Robert Perless was one of hundreds who gathered on Greenwich Point to watch in disbelief the tragic collapse of the World Trade Towers. "People were crying and praying," he said. "It was happening here, not in Iraq, but in New York City and visible here in Greenwich. A lot of people were dumbstruck."

Some time after that fateful day, an image, an artistic inspiration, came to Perless. "I looked out toward the city, and it came to me. What I wanted to do," he said, "was create a pair of ghost towers you could look through at the site it occurred, on Greenwich Point, to capture the experience of our loss."

The Ghost Towers, Perless' memorial to Sept.11, would be made of 2½-inch-thick titanium rods rising 40 to 50 feet above the water, and would stand 60 feet off the shoreline.

"The effect would be of a memorial," he said "of an ephemeral vision of a shimmering image of the towers that is only seen when the light reflects off the thin profile of the metal when you look at Ground Zero on the New York skyline. It would shimmer and take on the visual personality of the sun or moonlight and change through the day and seasons."

As part of his memorial, Perless designed a special seating area. A bench of native granite to be set back from the existing walkway would be built in the shape of half a pentagon with the carved-out names of those from Greenwich who had died in the World Trade Towers and in the Pentagon attack. "The sun would project their names onto the walkway," said Perless.

But the Ghost Towers were not to be. The idea was rejected by the Town after the Greenwich Arts Council chose not to support the project.

"From an aesthetic point of view, the board could not support it," said Adele Teitell, president of the board of the Greenwich Arts Council at the time. "It was putting up a structure where there was nothing intrusive in that setting."

Perless' granite benches also were cited by the Council members as not blending into the setting as well as the wooden benches do that are placed along the Point's walkway.

Perless's memorial, though, was not without its supporters. One Council member at the time, Betsy Jordan Hand, who now lives in Boulder, Colo., spoke of being "disappointed" with the Council's reaction. Hand had initially suggested to Perless to come up with an idea for a Sept. 11 memorial in Greenwich.

"Betsy was the godmother of this project," said Perless.

"They (the Council) were shy about putting something in the water," explained Hand. "There was a legitimate concern. It was a foreign object in the water."

"But," added Hand, "it would have been really cool. It's a cool idea."

Today, Perless keeps the model of his memorial on the window sill opposite his computer drafting work station. "When I look out the window, that's what I see," he said.

He wonders if his memorial will ever have a home.