Thousands of tiles that have hung in the West Village as a 9/11 memorial were taken down yesterday following a spat between local residents and the organization that curates the collection, according to a caretaker.
It took volunteers 2 1/2 hours to completely dismantle Tiles For America, which first sprang up on a fence at Greenwich Avenue and Seventh Avenue South the day after the 2001 terror attacks.
“We want it to live on,” said Andretti Andretti of the Tiles For America Preservation Project, a loose coalition of Village residents.
He said the pieces will be at his West Village home until a permanent place for them is found while the MTA constructs a ventilation plant on the lot where the memorial stood.
The MTA had said earlier that it would incorporate the tiles into the exterior wall of the plant when construction is completed in about four years — but it’s unclear whether that’s still the plan.
Andretti’s group had been in talks with the Tennessee-based Contemporary Ceramic Studios Association of America — which collects new pieces to display at the memorial from artists around the nation — about where to place the tiles during construction.
But those talks took a sour turn when the CCSA told the volunteers that it wanted the tiles to be placed at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Rather than let the tiles be taken upstate, Andretti and other volunteers removed them before the Tennessee group could.
“We said, ‘That’s kind of sweet, but thanks but no thanks,’ ” said Andretti.
“We’ve been maintaining it and we will continue to do so. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
Community Board 2 — whose district includes the site — had also recommended that the tiles go to Albany.
Tiles for America started as a cluster of angel figures attached to a fence and morphed into thousands of ceramic squares honoring the victims.
The first angels were hung with ribbons as get-well-soon messages for the wounded expected to be transported to the now-shuttered St. Vincent’s Hospital, which was located across the street.
But because so many were killed, the display soon turned into a tribute to the dead.