Lee Ielpi, president of the September 11 Families’ Association, is sending letters to public safety agencies offering artifacts. “Any bona fide city, town, county, state, corporations, other countries, France, Paris, Lyon, that would want a piece of steel, it would behoove us to accommodate them,” he said.

In the years immediately following the attacks, donations of 9/11 artifacts trickled out to various entities, but the requests were not handled by a single organization, the Port Authority said. The agency requires a detailed description in each request of how the steel will be displayed. Individuals cannot receive artifacts, only cities or organizations. The requests that are pending supplied detailed specifications for the pieces they want: “I am looking for an ‘I’ beam roughly 8’ in length; however, anything that we could have would mean more than words could ever express,” wrote Lt. Michael L. Zarella with the fire department of Mendon, Mass. He visited and chose the piece he wanted, a 10-foot-long hunk of steel “twisted like a party streamer,” he said.

Requests for the steel must also be approved by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court, who is overseeing the wrongful death lawsuits stemming from the attacks. While the steel is considered potential evidence in those cases, tests on the steel were completed in 2005. The judge has since granted all requests and has given no indication he will do otherwise for the pending ones.

The requests are deferential. “All we need is a 1-foot-by-1-foot-by-4-feet tall piece of steel,” read a letter from the mayor and the president of a memorial in Glens Falls, N.Y. “It’s a small piece of steel to fill our big hearts.”

In Wichita, Kan., the Transportation Security Administration awaits shipment of a 600-pound piece of steel. Officials plan to chop it into eight pieces and display each piece in one of the state’s airports. “Most of these are really, really small airports,” said Keith Osborn, the security director.

Steel will be displayed in two parks only about 20 miles apart in Ohio: one beside the Westerville Fire Division Headquarters (“We plan on standing it up and have it facing in the same direction it was when it was in New York, with the north side facing in the right direction,” said a firefighter, Thomas C. Ullom); the other in Hilliard, which selected three pieces. Both memorials will be called First Responder Park.