About $40 million has been spent or earmarked to transform the field about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh into a national park. The National Park Foundation, a charity that works to fund National Park Service projects, raised $6 million from 110,000 private donors to build the Tower of Voices.
Steve Clark, the park’s superintendent, said the tower will complete the memorial “in a most beautiful way.”
“The intent is to create a set of 40 tones, or voices, that can connote through consonance the serenity and nobility of the site while also through the dissonance recalling the event that consecrated the site,” said primary architect Paul Murdoch. Sunday’s groundbreaking included a “soundbreaking” during which a simulation of the wind chimes was played.