Oklahoma City bombing

The Oklahoma City bombing was a 1995 terrorist attack in which the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, a U.S. government office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was destroyed, killing 168 people. It is the largest domestic terrorist attack in the history of the United States, and - until the September 11, 2001 attacks - largest terrorist attack of any kind in the nation's history.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial

Today, the site of the Murrah building is occupied by a large memorial. This memorial, designed by Oklahoma City architects Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg, includes a reflecting pool bookended by two large "doorways", one inscribed with the time 9:01, the opposite with 9:03, the pool between representing the moment of the blast. On the south end of the memorial is a field full of symbolic bronze and stone chairs—one for each person lost, arranged based on what floor they were on. The seats of the children killed are smaller than those of the adults lost. On the opposite side is the "survivor tree", part of the building's original landscaping that somehow survived the blast and the fires that followed it. The memorial left part of the foundation of the building intact, so that visitors can see the scale of the destruction. Around the western edge of the memorial is a portion of the chain link fence erected after the blast on which thousands of people spontaneously left flowers, ribbons, teddy bears, and other mementos on in the weeks following the bombing. On a corner adjacent to the memorial is a sculpture titled "And Jesus Wept" erected by St. Joseph's Catholic Church. St. Joseph's, one of the first brick and mortar churches in the city, was almost totally destroyed by the blast. The statue is not part of the memorial itself, but is popular with visitors nonetheless. North of the memorial is the Journal Record Building which now houses the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute. Also in the building is the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a non partisan think tank.

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