Flight 93 National Memorial: Tower of Voices

The ranger had told us that the Tower of Voices stands 93 feet tall, in honor of Flight 93. It’s fifteen feet in diameter. We were there on a gorgeous day, and the tower was stunning against the backdrop of a perfect blue sky. The tower is open in a pattern all the way up and there are forty chimes inside to honor the forty passengers and crew members who died in the crash of Flight 93.

The sign about the tower says that “The Tower of Voices aluminum tubular chimes which create music when the wind blows through the concrete tower….Conifer and deciduous plantings are arranged in concentric rings, representing sound waves emanating from the tower.” The tower is set up in eight columns, each of which has five chimes hanging from it. They span two octaves, for the musically inclined, and are tuned to C, D, E, F#, G, and B. They are all eight inches in diameter, but their lengths range from five to ten feet, which is how they get the different notes.

The Tower of Voices was my favorite thing at the Flight 93 National Memorial. I’m glad we came here at the end of our visit and not as the first thing, although it is the first thing you pass when you enter the site. It’s super cool. It’s open on one side and you can walk right up inside it and look up to the sky, seeing all the chimes attached all the way up the 93-foot-tall structure.

The disappointing thing for me, though, was that I couldn’t hear any music. I asked a few other people who were there if they could hear anything, and nobody could. It was not a windless day, although it wasn’t remarkably windy, but I had thought we’d be able to hear something, even if only faintly, and couldn’t. It would be nice if these chimes were a little lighter or somehow easier for the wind to set in motion, so that the Voices would be clear even on an unremarkable (but not totally still) day.