New 9/11 25th Anniversary Tribute Book Traces the Twin Towers Back to a 1789 Prayer

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Aug 25, 2026, 16:35 ET

Forty years of photographs from both sides of the Hudson; pre-orders open today.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. and NEW YORK, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Dave Rossi was standing on the Jersey City waterfront on September 11, 2001, watching the smoke cross the Hudson. He had photographed those two towers since they went up in the 1970s, from Bayonne, Weehawken, Manhattan and Brooklyn. He has returned every year since to photograph the Tribute in Light. Visit: www.AmericasProvidence.com

www.AmericasProvidence.com
On April 30, 1789, George Washington took the oath of office at Federal Hall in New York City. No Bible had been provided. Jacob Morton hurried to St. John’s Lodge No. 1 and returned with theirs. Washington swore on it, kissed it, then led the First Congress on foot toward Trinity Church to pray for the new nation — but Trinity had burned in the Great Fire of 1776. So the procession walked several blocks farther, to the modest chapel of St. Paul’s. — www.AmericasProvidence.com On April 30, 1789, George Washington took the oath of office at Federal Hall in New York City. No Bible had been provided. Jacob Morton hurried to St. John’s Lodge No. 1 and returned with theirs. Washington swore on it, kissed it, then led the First Congress on foot toward Trinity Church to pray for the new nation — but Trinity had burned in the Great Fire of 1776. So the procession walked several blocks farther, to the modest chapel of St. Paul’s.

Forty years of that work is now a book. "America's Providence - 9/11 Tribute in Photographs - Faith, Freedom, and the Forces That Would Undo America" opens for pre-order today and publishes September 15, 2026, just after the last photo taken on 9/11 in inserted from the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks and the 250th year of the United States.

It does not begin in 2001. It begins on April 30, 1789, when George Washington arrived at Federal Hall to take the first oath of office under the Constitution. No Bible had been provided. Jacob Morton was sent to St. John's Lodge and returned with theirs. Washington swore on it, then led the First Congress on foot to a small chapel called St. Paul's, on ground that would one day border the World Trade Center.

Two hundred and twelve years later, that chapel stood in the shadow of the falling towers and did not lose a pane of glass.

"Every year people come from all over the world to stand where the towers were," Rossi said. "Most of them walk right past the chapel where this country was first prayed for. I wanted the two of them on the same page."

Over fifty of the author's photographs anchor the book, which also recovers the September 11 boatlift, in which ordinary boat crews carried nearly half a million people off Manhattan in about nine hours.

Pre-order pricing runs through publication: softcover $45.00 (regularly $55.00), hardcover $69.00 (regularly $89.00), digital $12.99. A signed and numbered Limited Edition of 1,776 copies is offered during 2026 only, at $250.00.

About the Author: Dave Rossi is a New Jersey-based photographer working throughout the New York metropolitan area. He has photographed the lower Manhattan skyline for more than forty years.