This year’s World of Concrete Artistry event saw Concrete Industry Management program students assist in a memorial to fallen members of New York City’s
This year’s World of Concrete Artistry event saw Concrete Industry Management program students assist in a memorial to fallen members of New York City’s 48th Street & 8th Avenue firehouse, which lost two companies on September 11, 2001, including men and women from Ladder 4, Engine 54 and Battalion 9.
The project was initiated by New York Fire Department veteran Ed Gruetzner, now an accomplished decorative concrete practitioner in White Plains, N.Y., following his 2001 retirement from NYFD. He approached CIM supporter Mike Eastergard, owner of form manufacturer PreiTech Corp., who in turn enlisted program faculty and students at California State University-Chico and Middle Tennessee State University. A simple, evocative design was agreed upon: vertical forms representing the silhouette of the Twin Towers that will reflect light on a faceted surface ghosted with the names of the fallen firefighters.
Students at each school tackled the concrete mix, creating sample panels prior to their Las Vegas arrival. At World of Concrete, they performed all concrete mixing and placing; erected the completed panels; and, dismantled the memorial at the show’s close, carefully crating it in specially designed foam forms for shipment to New York. Gruetzner, Eastergard, and faculty from both schools, as well as many other decorative concrete industry professionals were on hand to advise the students and provide expertise during the course of the project.