Every day, from his office window, Tom Grassi catches a glimpse of the stairs. They come from nothing and lead to nothing. On top, their granite treads still gleam, but the bottom has been stripped bare. They are a relic of what once was the World Trade Center. Indeed, these plaza stairs are all that is left above ground from those buildings.

Grassi worked on the 82nd floor of Tower One. On 9/11, he descended—at first in light and then in darkness, smoke and dust. He moved slowly so the injured could be carried down and later so the firefighters could walk up. He reached the plaza outside, all but destroyed from the rubble of Tower Two, and walked down those stairs. Within 10 minutes, Tower One thundered down.

Five years later, a bitter fight is raging over the stairs, which have been dubbed the “Survivors’ Staircase” and recently were named one of America’s 11 most endangered landmarks by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. On one side are 9/11 survivors and historic preservationists; on the other are many of the 10,000 residents of Battery Park City, which abuts the site. At issue is whether the stairs deserve to be saved.

Bill Love has lived in Battery Park City for 13 years. He boarded a subway under the Twin Towers minutes before the first plane hit. Today, he sits on a local community board and can see the area from his office. “People are very frustrated that we’re approaching the fifth anniversary and the site is only beginning to be rebuilt,” Love says. “They want the commercial and retail activity back.” Many residents see protecting the stairs as just another delay. “These stairs are of zero historic significance,” says John Dellaportas, head of the West Street Coalition, a local citizens group. He calls them “one last piece of debris.” As for the preservationists, he says, “If they want these stairs, they can put them in their own front yards.”

To Tom Canavan, they’re more than “debris.” When Tower Two fell, he was buried in rubble. Canavan thought he was dead. Then he tasted dust and pictured his pregnant wife and his son. He began to dig on his belly through concrete, steel and bodies toward a shaft of light. When he reached the plaza, he says, “it was like being in a blizzard—smoke and papers were everywhere.” Then he saw two Port Authority workers atop those stairs. He was one of the last to descend safely to the street below.

“Those stairs remind us that we made it,” says 9/11 survivor Kayla Bergeron. She had assumed they were destroyed with the Twin Towers. Then one day, passing the site, “I stopped in my tracks: I saw our stairs.”

Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, calls the staircase “a permanent witness to the devastation of that day” and believes it should stand in place. But John Dellaportas says, “We are just trying to get on with our lives.” Adds Bill Love, “We’re not opposed to considering having the stairs moved elsewhere. Parts may be worth preserving, but we’re against putting the entire structure in any location that interferes with rebuilding the site and pedestrian traffic.”

The final decision rests with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Right now, a tower is slated to be built where the stairs—which are 64 feet long and weigh 350,000 pounds—stand. Tom Grassi would like them to be incorporated into the new building. He likens the site to Pearl Harbor, where the U.S.S. Arizona can still be seen in its watery grave. Tom Canavan thinks of Gettysburg. “We saved thousands of acres of land from that epic battle,” he says. “What makes this place less significant?” Adds Kayla Bergeron: “We are building a monument to those who died on 9/11. This is the monument to the people who survived.”

If you want to learn more about the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s campaign to save the staircase, visit nationaltrust.org/wtc.