Steel from the World Trade Center, forged in Coatesville, returns home

Five-hundred tons of charred steel salvaged from the remains of New York’s World Trade Center are returning to Coatesville today. The town that supplied steel for the skyscrapers will build a new memorial with the salvage.

By Aaron Moselle

Five-hundred tons of charred steel salvaged from the remains of New York’s World Trade Center are returning to Coatesville today. The town that supplied steel for the skyscrapers will build a new memorial with the salvage.

A fleet of tractor trailers will trek from John F. Kennedy Airport to Coatesville with 10 structural shapes – or “trees” – in tow.

The 50-foot “trees” were forged by the Lukens Steel plant over 40 years ago, and used to frame the first nine floors of the Towers.

“People can derive their own meaning from them because I think these pieces have so much to say,” says Scott Huston, the president of the Greystone Society, a non-profit dedicated to preserving and interpreting Coatesville’s iron and steel industry. “There’s a paradigm of pre- and post-9/11 America. And these are the physical artifacts that can hopefully convey a sense of, not necessarily naivety, but how much more sophisticated we are today as Americans and what the cost of freedom means to us.”

Huston says they’re hoping to open the memorial in time for September 11, 2011 – the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks.