"God bless our Local 3 brothers who gave their lives on 9/11/01 and all the rest"

Ground zero has passed from the hands of rescuers to the hands of mourners to the hands of dreamers to the hands of planners. Now, with the Freedom Tower cornerstone in place, it is passing into the hands of builders.

Deep within the smoke-blackened ruins of an underground parking garage, 30 workers are installing tendonlike bundles of steel cable, called tiebacks, to anchor the concrete perimeter foundation wall to bedrock. This will permit the demolition in coming months of the last major structural vestige of the old World Trade Center.

A stairwell, open to the sky, bears other traces of the 1993 and 2001 attacks: glow-in-the-dark paint strips (in case of power loss), banisters dented by the falling debris and a fluorescent orange heart and cross, evidently an impromptu memorial to the 16 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local who died in the attack. "God bless our Local 3 brothers who gave their lives on 9/11/01 and all the rest," it says.