Mart museum in 1937. And opened, i believe in march of that year. So opened this building as the first africanamerican museum in the country. President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating the National Park service on august 25th, 1916. To mark the centennial American History tv is featuring sites throughout the country. We continue now with another stop on the cspan citys tour. On the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the Federal Building in oklahoma city, oklahoma governor dedicateed a National Memorial to the victims on the site where the building once stood. 168 people including 19 children died in the 1995 blast. On april 19th, fire years ago, another spring wednesday like today, the flag of our nation was flying over the murrah building. It is flying over our memorial today, and i know it flies proudly in all of your hearts. For those who perpetuated this act, we have one message in america, you can speak and write and vote and complain, but there is no right to maim and bomb and kill. [ applause ] and if you think that you can bring that flag down, there is your answer. We have so many special guests today. It is a homecoming for many of you who came to oklahoma in 1995, and gave us your sweat and your tears and your support. We welcome home all of you. This is your home. We are all oklahomans today, and we are all americans. May god continue to bless our beloved land. [ applause ] my husband and i and our parson designed the outdoor symbolic memorial here and that is everything you see in this space is kind of green parklike space. This project was given out as a competition, and we decided to participate in this competition, because we felt like it was a way we could contribute to the community, and give them something that would help them. As part of that competition process, the Memorial Foundation which was established here sort of a Guiding Force in creating this memorial, they sent out a mission statement, or a set of guidelines to which we should follow when we were thinking about how to design this memorial. And there were a couple of things that really were important. They gave us the whole boundary, the perimeter and included in that was this section of fifth street that is now where our reflecting pool is. That used to be a regular street that just ran through the site, and they had opted, before we ever became involved, they decided to close off this street permanently and make it part of this memorial room. Another thing that was really important, an important guideline, is that they wanted all the participants to create a design that would allow for the survivor tree to remain, and the survivor tree is located at the high point of the site. It was not a celebrated tree before this happened. It was just a tree in a parking lot. But after the bomb exploded and that tree took on sort of the symbolism of surviving, because itself, it the tree itself is a survivor. It almost didnt survive that bombing, and because it was such a dynamic symbol of resilience, the community really started to rally around that tree and together under its branches, and it became a real symbol for this place. This part of the site is where the murrah building used to stand. This is the footprint basically of that building. Those are the walls of the parking garage right behind, and one of the guidelines was to, please, find a way to remember those who were killed in this space. So we treated this really as a more sacred space. Its were acting very reverently here. Its quieter and lined the perimeter with tall pine trees. Theyre very regional, and they grow to be almost 90 feet tall, and their job is to create this soft, green, protective edge for this site. And for these nine rows of empty chairs, and we kind of saw these as sentinels that are protective. Nine rows of chair. Each corresponds to one floor of the building. The chairs on that row really reflect the people that were working or were visiting that floor of the building when the bomb went off. Each chair has a name of a victim inscribed on it, and theyre not big, bold, black letters but very lightly etched into the glass, and so we thought that was something more subtle but very beautiful. The chairs are made up of these glass bases and a bronze and granite seat and back, and they are really designed to be at the scale of a human of a person. Theres something that were all familiar with, is a chair. I mean, thats something that we all can relate to across many cultures and many ages. So we thought that was just a good way to reach a lot of people. In the day you dont see these glass bases as much. Especially from a little bit of distance. You dont see them, and it seems like these float a little bit, because that glass is not so apparent. But at night, its almost the opposite comes true, where the glass bases light up, and they become, really, the beacons of hope that remind us that good can come out of something so evil. There are different size chairs. Yes. Theres two sizes. And theyre pretty subtle. The difference. But if you look, you can really see that. The smaller chairs are for the children. There were 19 children killed. 15 of those were in the daycare, and thats on the second floor. So most of those chairs are on the second row. And that really starts to speak to, to me, to the tragedy of how this hit just across across a whole range of people. What were looking at here are the gates of time. And they really act as our formal entry markers into the memorial room. We have one to the east marked 901. The gate to the west is marked 903, and they really reflect or reference the moment of the bomb at 902. We dont literally write that out but were just referencing 902 is really when what this whole outdoor memorial room is about. Those are acting as our edges. Each gate is comprised of two walls. In between those walls just a slight pause, a slight almost like a narthex to a church, a slight pause before you enter into the memorial room. You step away from the hustle and bustle of the city and get a slice of the sky and go into the memorial room. Right in the middle of this whole memorial room is a long reflecting pool, about 313 feet long. It sits where fifth street used to run through. This used to be a busy active street, and now it is almost a void. We cant go there anymore. We made it inaccessible. It also acts as an organizing element to all the different players in this outdoor room, and it is also kind of a common edge to where we can all come meet and we really saw this main element as a place for to remember those changed forever. The water itself is only three quarters of an inch deep. You probably wont know that unless you get up to the pool edge and look into it. We liked the idea of this very quiet mysteriously moving water. We thought that the noise it makes is wonderful, soothing noise to when you are visiting a place like this. It plays a big role on many sensory levels when you are experiencing a memorial. The record building is where the museum is housed, and that was the facade were looking at is the alley facade. When the bomb happened it damaged the buildings around it with these pictures of whatever the kids were thinking about and whatever message they had for the community they put on these and painted on tiles. We had a huge archive of tiles to choose from and we wanted to line this whole wall with these tiles so people would have an idea of even more of what the kids contribution was. This area is just a big stone paved area, but interspersed are these big basically chalk board slates, and we kind of arrange them like a collage or pictures and theyre here almost to be an interactive piece. It is a way that kids and adults can come and still leave the same messages for the community and we really hardly ever see these blank. They are either washed off by the rain or washed off by the people that take care of the memorial and there is always people coming in to leave messages. We feel like that interaction is sort of an important part of this memorial and it is an important way of people letting other people know youre not alone. When we enter the competition to design this place, we had no idea of the weight that this would be, but once we came here, we met the people, and we started interacting with