VIGGO RAMBUSCH played a leading role in commemorating the sacrifice of New York firefighters on Sept. 11, 2001.

After terrorists slammed hijacked airplanes into the city’s World Trade Center, firefighters saved thousands of lives that day — and 343 members of the New York Fire Department died in the effort.

On June 10, 2006, Fire Department unveiled a 56-foot bronze bas relief, which Rambusch designed, at Ladder Company 10 on the corner of Greenwich and Liberty streets adjacent to Ground Zero.

Rambusch, a lifelong Catholic, serves as the honorary chairman and senior project manager at Rambusch Company, a design, lighting and architectural firm his grandfather founded in 1898. He spoke to Register correspondent Patrick Novecosky from his Manhattan office.

You’ve done some wonderful work renovating churches, developing mosaics and church domes. The FDNY memorial is a little different. Where did the idea for the project come from?

The fire department had initially asked us to put together a display case as a permanent memorial. I said that a display case is not permanent, so I suggested a bronze or marble bas relief and they picked up on it.

They asked what a bas relief is, so I pulled a quarter out of my pocket and showed it to them. Among the most famous bas reliefs are Trajan’s Column and Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. They tell stories of their battles. Of course, they are wound like a ribbon around the column. We did ours straight across.

Is there a spiritual element in this?

When we first met with the donor and the Manhattan fire chief, we talked for a couple of hours. My associate Joe Oddi was making sketches. When the meeting was over, the chief asked him what he was doing. When he saw Joe’s sketches, he started to cry. A couple of times I caught myself crying, too. It was incredibly moving. Joe made the seven-foot-long drawing that was the take-off point for this piece.

The dedication of these firefighters to their mission is so moving. They give everything that they can, including their lives. These men did their duty regardless of the cost. Was it a religious experience? Well, I guess it was on the edge of one.

How did your own experience on 9/11 form your vision for the memorial?

We tried to catch the spirit of 9/11 in the memorial. I was walking to my office that morning, and there was a radio on at a newspaper stand. I heard that an American Airlines flight had crashed into the World Trade Center. At that time, my office was about three miles north.

Our workshop is in Jersey City, N.J., only a mile across the river from the World Trade Center. The people there went up on the roof, and they could see people jumping from the windows. That night, they slept on the workbenches because the whole transportation system bogged down. My son called together the employees who are from various denominations and they prayed the Our Father.

When we were putting the panels of the memorial in place, they stopped work for a few moments. Before we lifted them into place, the firefighters who were helping us wrote messages on the back of the panels to the people who had died.

You’ve been Catholic all your life.

My grandfather came from Denmark. He converted. He wrote a letter to his father, who was a Lutheran minister and said that he was not converting, but that this was the religion in which his father was brought up.

When he got to Brooklyn, the only Lutheran churches were the Pentecostal ones. He had been brought up as a high-church Danish Lutheran. In other words, he believed in the virgin birth of Christ and the divinity of Christ and the ascension and all those things. He found that he had come home when he studied the Catholic faith and realized that was really what his father was, too. We still have that letter.

My father was brought up a Catholic. My mother converted when she married Dad. I was brought up a Catholic all the way. I went to Fordham Prep, and at one point considered becoming a priest. I had a terrible difficulty with Latin, so I figured that was a sign from God.

How do you draw on your Catholic faith in your work?

I’ve been studying the Catholic faith all my life. I’ve been reading and traveling. Every time I travel, I do a “church crawl.” I go to church after church after church. The inspiration for the shrine domes that I did in Washington was St. Mark’s in Venice. I enjoy it. It’s my life!

The arts have been an essential element of the faith from the beginning. What place does art have in the Church today?

I think the whole art world is swinging back to understandable, rational art. Or you could call it realistic art. There is still abstract art, but it’s pretty hard to find it inspirational or for it to help you to contemplate God.

Then there’s art that actually helps you to contemplate and pray and have devotion. That’s the kind of art we’ve had for 2,000 years in the Catholic Church. It’s gradually swinging back. This kind of art is an aid to devotion. Devotion is internal. You can’t create devotion, but you can aid it.

That’s what we’ve done in the FDNY memorial. We help those who see it to remember. And if it lasts as long as Trajan’s Column — 2,000 years — it will be a good run.

Patrick Novecosky

is based in Naples, Florida.