The
World Trade Center (WTC) was a
complex in Lower Manhattan in
New York
City
whose seven buildings were destroyed in 2001 in the September
11 terrorist attacks. The site is currently being
rebuilt with six new skyscrapers and a memorial to the casualties
of the attacks.
The original World Trade Center was designed by
Minoru Yamasaki in the early 1960s using a
tube-frame structural design for
the twin 110-story towers.
In gaining approval for the project, the
Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey agreed to take over the Hudson &
Manhattan Railroad
which became the Port Authority
Trans-Hudson
(PATH). Groundbreaking for the World Trade
Center took place on August 5, 1966. The North Tower (1) was
completed in December 1970 and the South Tower (2) was finished in
July 1971.
Construction of the World
Trade Center involved excavating a large amount of material
which was used in making Battery Park City
on the west side of Lower Manhattan.
The
complex was located in the heart of New York City
's downtown financial district and contained 13.4
million square feet (1.24 million m2) of office
space. The
Windows on the
World restaurant was located on the 106th and 107th floors of
the
North Tower, while the
Top of the
World observation deck was located on the 107th floor of the
South Tower.
Other World Trade
Center buildings included the Marriott World Trade Center;
4 World Trade
Center
; 5 World Trade Center
; 6 World Trade Center
, which housed the United States Customs; and 7 World Trade
Center
, which was built in 1985. The World Trade Center
experienced a fire on February 13, 1975 and a bombing
on February 26, 1993. In 1998, the Port
Authority decided to privatize the World Trade Center, leasing the
buildings to a private company to manage, and awarded the lease to
Silverstein Properties in
July 2001. One World Trade Center included the corporate
headquarters of
Cantor
Fitzgerald.
On the morning of September 11, 2001,
Al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two
767 jets into the complex, one into each tower,
in a coordinated suicide attack. After burning for 56 minutes, the
South Tower (2) collapsed, followed a half-hour later by the North
Tower (1), with the attacks on the World Trade Center resulting in
2,750 deaths. 7 World Trade Center collapsed later in the day and
the other buildings, although they did not collapse, had to be
demolished because they were damaged beyond repair.
The process of cleanup
and recovery at the World Trade Center site
took eight months. The first new building at
the site was 7 World Trade Center which opened in May 2006. The
Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation (LMDC), established in November 2001 to
oversee the rebuilding process, organized competitions to select a
site plan and memorial design.
Memory Foundations, designed by Daniel Libeskind, was selected as the
master plan, which included the 1 World Trade Center
, three office towers along Church Street and a
memorial designed by Michael
Arad.
Planning and construction
The idea of establishing a
World Trade Center in New York
City was first proposed in 1946. The
New York State Legislature passed
a bill authorizing New York Governor
Thomas E. Dewey to begin developing plans for the
project but the plans were put on hold in 1949. During the late
1940s and 1950s, economic growth in New York City was concentrated
in
Midtown Manhattan, while
Lower Manhattan was left out. To
help stimulate
urban renewal,
David Rockefeller suggested that the Port
Authority build a World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
Initial
plans, made public in 1961, identified a site along the East River
for the World Trade Center. As a bi-state
agency, the Port Authority required approval from both the
governors of New York and New Jersey in order to undertake new
projects. New Jersey Governor
Robert
B. Meyner objected to New York
getting a $335 million project. Toward the end of 1961,
negotiations with outgoing New Jersey Governor Meyner reached a
stalemate.
At the time, ridership on New Jersey's
Hudson and Manhattan Railroad
(H&M) had declined substantially from a high of
113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958 after
new automobile tunnels and bridges had opened across the
Hudson River. In a December 1961 meeting
between Port Authority director
Austin
J. Tobin and newly elected New
Jersey Governor
Richard J.
Hughes, the Port Authority offered to take
over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad to have it become the
Port Authority
Trans-Hudson
(PATH). The Port Authority also decided to move the
World Trade Center project to the Hudson Terminal
building site on the west side of Lower Manhattan,
a more convenient location for New Jersey commuters arriving via
PATH. With the new location and Port Authority acquisition
of the H&M Railroad, New Jersey agreed to support the World
Trade Center project.
Approval was also needed from New York City Mayor
John Lindsay and the
New York City Council. Disagreements
with the city centered on tax issues. On August 3, 1966, an
agreement was reached that the Port Authority would make annual
payments to the City in lieu of taxes for the portion of the World
Trade Center leased to private tenants. In subsequent years, the
payments would rise as the
real estate
tax rate increased.
Architectural design
On September 20, 1962, the Port Authority announced the selection
of
Minoru Yamasaki as lead architect
and
Emery Roth & Sons as associate
architects. Yamasaki devised the plan to incorporate twin towers;
Yamasaki's original plan called for the towers to be 80 stories
tall. In order to meet the Port Authority's requirement to build
10 million
square feet
(930,000 m
2) of office space, the buildings would
each need to be 110 stories tall.

A typical floor layout and elevator
arrangement of the WTC towers
A major limiting factor in building height is the issue of
elevators; the taller the building, the more
elevators are needed to service the building,
requiring more space-consuming elevator banks. Yamasaki and the
engineers decided to use a new system with sky lobbies; floors
where people could switch from a large-capacity express elevator
which serves the sky lobbies, to a local elevator that goes to each
floor in a section. This allowed the local elevators to be stacked
within the same elevator shaft. Located on the 44th and 78th floors
of each tower, the sky lobbies enabled the elevators to be used
efficiently, increasing the amount of usable space on each floor
from 62 to 75 percent by reducing the number of required elevator
shafts. Altogether, the World Trade Center had 95 express and local
elevators. This system was inspired by the
New York City Subway system whose lines
include local stations where local trains stop and express stations
where all trains stop.
Yamasaki's design for the World Trade Center, unveiled to the
public on January 18, 1964, called for a square plan approximately
207 feet (63 m) in dimension on each side. The buildings
were designed with narrow office windows 18
inches (45
cm) wide,
which reflected Yamasaki's
fear of
heights as well as his desire to make building occupants feel
secure. Yamasaki's design included building facades sheathed in
aluminum-alloy. The World Trade Center was one of the most striking
American implementations of the architectural ethic of
Le Corbusier and it was the seminal expression
of Yamasaki's gothic modernist tendencies.
In addition to the twin towers, the plan for the World Trade Center
complex included four other low-rise buildings which were built in
the early 1970s. The 47-story 7 World Trade Center building was
added in the 1980s to the north of the main complex. Altogether,
the main World Trade Center complex occupied a
superblock.
Structural design
The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle &
Jackson worked to implement Yamasaki's design, developing the
tube-frame structural system used
in the twin towers. The Port Authority's Engineering Department
served as
foundation
engineers, Joseph R. Loring & Associates as
electrical engineers, and Jaros, Baum
& Bolles as
mechanical
engineers.
Tishman Realty &
Construction Company was the
general contractor on the World Trade
Center project. Guy F. Tozzoli, director of the World Trade
Department at the Port Authority, and Rino M. Monti, the Port
Authority's Chief Engineer, oversaw the project. As an interstate
agency, the Port Authority was not subject to local laws and
regulations of the City of New York including
building codes. Nonetheless, the structural
engineers of the World Trade Center ended up following draft
versions of the new 1968 building codes.The tube-frame design,
earlier introduced by
Fazlur Khan, was a
new approach which allowed open floor plans rather than columns
distributed throughout the interior to support building loads as
had traditionally been done. The World Trade Center towers utilized
high-strength, load-bearing perimeter
steel
columns called
Vierendeel
trusses that were spaced closely together to form a strong,
rigid wall structure, supporting virtually all lateral loads such
as wind loads, and sharing the gravity load with the core columns.
The perimeter structure containing 59 columns per side was
constructed with extensive use of prefabricated modular pieces each
consisting of three columns, three stories tall, connected by
spandrel plates. The spandrel plates
were welded to the columns to create the modular pieces off-site at
the fabrication shop. Adjacent modules were bolted together with
the splices occurring at mid-span of the columns and spandrels. The
spandrel plates were located at each floor, transmitting
shear stress between columns, allowing them to
work together in resisting lateral loads. The joints between
modules were staggered vertically so the column splices between
adjacent modules were not at the same floor.
The core of the towers housed the elevator and utility shafts,
restrooms, three stairwells, and other support spaces. The core –a
combined steel and concrete structure– of each tower was a
rectangular area 87 by 135 feet (27 by 41 m) and
contained 47 steel columns running from the bedrock to the top of
the tower. The large, column-free space between the perimeter and
core was bridged by prefabricated floor trusses. The floors
supported their own weight as well as
live
loads, providing lateral stability to the exterior walls and
distributing wind loads among the exterior walls. The floors
consisted of 4 inch (10 cm) thick lightweight concrete
slabs laid on a fluted steel deck. A grid of lightweight bridging
trusses and main trusses supported the floors. The trusses
connected to the perimeter at alternate columns and were on
6 foot 8 inch (2.03 m) centers. The top chords of
the trusses were bolted to seats welded to the spandrels on the
exterior side and a channel welded to the core columns on the
interior side. The floors were connected to the perimeter spandrel
plates with
viscoelastic dampers
which helped reduce the amount of sway felt by building occupants.
The trusses supported a thick lightweight concrete floor slab with
shear connections for composite action.
Hat
trusses (or "outrigger truss") located
from the 107th floor to the top of the buildings were designed to
support a tall communication
antenna
on top of each building. Only 1 WTC (north tower) actually had an
antenna fitted; it was added in 1978. The truss system consisted of
six trusses along the long axis of the core and four along the
short axis. This truss system allowed some load redistribution
between the perimeter and core columns and supported the
transmission tower.
The tube
frame design using steel core and perimeter columns protected with
sprayed-on fire resistant material created a relatively lightweight
structure that would sway more in response to the wind compared to
traditional structures such as the Empire State Building
that have thick, heavy masonry for fireproofing
of steel structural elements. During the design process,
wind tunnel tests were done to establish
design wind pressures that the World Trade Center towers could be
subjected to and structural response to those forces. Experiments
also were done to evaluate how much sway occupants could
comfortably tolerate, however, many subjects experienced dizziness
and other ill effects. One of the chief engineers
Leslie Robertson worked with Canadian
engineer
Alan G. Davenport to develop viscoelastic
dampers to absorb some of the sway. These
viscoelastic dampers, used throughout the structures at the joints
between floor trusses and perimeter columns along with some other
structural modifications, reduced the building sway to an
acceptable level.
Construction

The World Trade Center under
construction in 1973.
In March 1965, the Port Authority began acquiring property at the
World Trade Center site. Demolition work began on March 21, 1966 to
clear thirteen square blocks of low rise buildings in
Radio Row for construction of the World Trade
Center. Groundbreaking for the construction of the World Trade
Center took place on August 5, 1966.
The site of the World Trade Center was located on landfill with the
bedrock located below. In order to construct the World Trade
Center, it was necessary to build the "
bathtub" with a
slurry
wall around the
West Street side of
the site, serving to keep water from the Hudson River out. The
slurry method selected by Port Authority’s chief engineer, John M.
Kyle, Jr., involved digging a
trench, and as
excavation proceeded,
filling the space with a "slurry" mixture composed of
bentonite and water which plugged holes and kept
groundwater out. When the trench was dug out, a steel cage was
inserted and concrete was poured in, forcing the "slurry" out. It
took fourteen months for the slurry wall to be completed; it was
necessary before excavation of material from the interior of the
site could begin.
The 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m3) of material excavated were used
to expand the Manhattan
shoreline across West Street to form Battery Park
City
(along with other fill and dredge
material.)
In January 1967, the Port Authority awarded $74 million in
contracts to various steel suppliers, and
Karl Koch was hired to erect the
steel.
Tishman Realty
& Construction was hired in February 1967 to oversee
construction of the project. Construction work began on the North
Tower in August 1968; construction on the South Tower was underway
by January 1969.
The original Hudson
Tubes
, carrying PATH trains into Hudson Terminal,
remained in service as elevated tunnels during the construction
process until 1971 when a new PATH
station
opened.
The
topping out ceremony of 1 WTC (North
Tower) took place on December 23, 1970, while 2 WTC's ceremony
(South Tower) occurred later on July 19, 1971. The first tenants
moved into the North Tower in December 1970; the South Tower
accepted tenants in January 1972. When the World Trade Center twin
towers were completed, the total costs to the Port Authority had
reached $900 million. The ribbon cutting ceremony was on April 4,
1973.
Criticism
Plans to build the World Trade Center were controversial. The site
for the World Trade Center was the location of
Radio Row, home to hundreds of commercial
and industrial tenants, property owners, small businesses, and
approximately 100 residents, many of whom fiercely resisted forced
relocation. A group of small businesses affected filed an
injunction challenging the Port Authority's power
of
eminent domain.
The case made its way
through the court system to the United
States Supreme Court
; the Court refused to accept the case.
Private
real estate developers and members of the Real Estate Board of New
York, led by Empire State Building
owner Lawrence A. Wien, expressed concerns
about this much "subsidized" office space going on the open market,
competing with the private sector when there was already a glut of
vacancies. Others questioned whether the Port Authority really
ought to take on a project described by some as a "mistaken social
priority."
The World
Trade Center design brought criticism of its aesthetics from the
American
Institute of Architects
and other groups. Lewis Mumford, author of
The City in History and other works
on
urban planning, criticized the
project and described it and other new skyscrapers as "just
glass-and-metal filing cabinets." The twin towers' narrow office
windows, only wide, were disliked by many for impairing the view
from the buildings.
The trade center's "
superblock," replacing a more
traditional, dense neighborhood, was regarded by some critics as an
inhospitable environment that disrupted the complicated traffic
network typical of Manhattan. For example, in his book
The
Pentagon of Power, Lewis Mumford denounced the center as an
"example of the purposeless
giantism and
technological exhibitionism that are now eviscerating the living
tissue of every great city." On the other hand, Mr. Yamasaki saw
the expanse as a focal point of serenity amidst the chaos of the
city.
For many years, the immense Austin J. Tobin Plaza was unwelcoming
and often beset by brisk winds at ground level. In 1999, the
outdoor plaza reopened after undergoing $12 million renovations
which involved replacing
marble pavers with
gray and pink
granite stones, adding new
benches, planters, new restaurants, food kiosks and outdoor dining
areas.
Complex
North and South towers

The WTC site building
arrangement
With the
construction of 7 World Trade Center
in the 1980s, the World Trade Center had a total of
seven buildings, but the most notable were the main two towers,
which each were 110 stories tall, stood over high, and occupied
about one acre (208.71 square feet) of the
total of the site
's
land. During a press conference in 1973,
Minoru Yamasaki was asked, "Why two
110-story buildings? Why not one 220-story building?" His response
was: "I didn't want to lose the human scale".
When completed in 1972, 1 World Trade Center (the
North Tower) became the tallest building in the
world for two years, surpassing the Empire State Building after a
40-year reign. The North Tower stood tall and featured a
telecommunications antenna or
mast
that was added at the top of the roof in 1978 and stood tall. With
the 360-foot-tall
antenna/
mast, the highest point of the North Tower
reached . 2 World Trade Center (the
South
Tower) became the second tallest building in the world when
completed in 1973. The South Tower's rooftop observation deck was
1,377 feet (420 m) high and its indoor observation deck was 1,310
feet (399 m) high.
The World Trade Center towers held the
height record only briefly: Chicago
's Sears
Tower
, finished in May 1973, reached 1,450 feet (442 m)
at the rooftop.
Of the 110 stories, eight were set aside for technical services in
mechanical floors Level B5/B6
(floors 7/8, 41/42, 75/76, and 108/109), which are four two-floor
areas evenly spaced up the building. All the remaining floors were
free for open-plan offices. Each floor of the towers had of space
for
occupancy. Each tower had 3.8 million
square feet (350,000
m2) of office space. Altogether the
entire complex of seven buildings had 11.2 million square feet
(1.04 km
2) of space.

The lobby of One World Trade
Center
Initially conceived as a complex dedicated to companies and
organizations directly taking part in "world trade," they at first
failed to attract the expected clientèle. During the early years,
various governmental organizations became key tenants of the World
Trade Center including the
State
of New York.
It was not until the 1980s that the city's
perilous financial state eased, after which an increasing number of
private companies—mostly financial firms tied to Wall Street
—became tenants. During the 1990s,
approximately 500 companies had offices in the complex including
many financial companies such as
Morgan
Stanley,
Aon Corporation,
Salomon Brothers and the Port
Authority itself.
The basement concourse of the World Trade
Center included The
Mall at the World Trade Center along with a PATH
station
. The North Tower became the home of the
corporate headquarters of
Cantor
Fitzgerald.
Electrical service to the towers was supplied by Consolidated
Edison (ConEd) at 13,800 volts. This service passed through the
World Trade Center Primary Distribution Center (PDC) and sent up
through the core of the building to electrical substations located
on the mechanical floors. The substations "stepped" the 13,800
primary voltage down to 480/277 volt secondary power and further to
120/208 volt general power and lighting service. The complex also
was served by emergency generators located in the sublevels of the
towers and on the roof of 5 WTC.
The 110th floor of 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower) housed
commercial and public service radio & television transmission
equipment. The roof of 1 WTC contained a vast array of transmission
antennas including the 360 ft (approx 110 m) center
antenna mast, rebuilt in 1999 by Dielectric Inc. to accommodate
DTV.
The center mast
contained the television signals for almost all NYC television
broadcasters: WCBS-TV
2, WNBC-TV
4, WNYW
5, WABC-TV
7, WWOR-TV
9 Secaucus
, WPIX
11, WNET
13 Newark
, WPXN-TV
31 and WNJU
47 Linden
. It also had four NYC FM broadcasters:
WPAT-FM 93.1, WNYC
93.9,
WKCR
89.9, and WKTU 103.5.
Access to the roof was controlled from the WTC Operations Control
Center (OCC) located in the B1 level of 2 WTC.
Top of the World observation deck

Two World Trade Center's observation
deck received an estimated 80,000 visitors a day.
Although most of the space in the World Trade Center complex was
off-limits to the public, the
South
Tower featured a public observation area called
Top of the World
Trade Center Observatories on its 107th floor. When visiting
the observation deck, visitors would first pass through security
checks added after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing then were
whisked to the 107th floor indoor observatory at a height of . The
Port Authority renovated the observatory in 1995, then leased it to
Ogden Entertainment to operate. Attractions added to the
observation deck included a simulated helicopter ride around the
city. The food court was designed with a subway car theme. Weather
permitting, visitors could take two short escalator rides up from
the 107th floor to an outdoor viewing platform at a height of 1,337
feet (420 m). On a clear day, visitors could see up to in any given
direction.
An anti-suicide fence was placed on the roof
itself, with the viewing platform set back and elevated above it,
requiring only an ordinary railing and leaving the view
unobstructed, unlike the observation deck of the Empire State
Building
.
Windows on the World restaurant

The view from Windows On The
World
The North Tower had a restaurant on its 106th and 107th floors
called
Windows on the World,
which opened in April 1976. The restaurant was developed by
Joe Baum at a cost of more than $17
million. Aside from the main restaurant, two offshoots were located
at the top of the North Tower: "Hors d'Oeuvrerie" (offered a
Danish smorgasbord
during the day and sushi in the evening) and "Cellar in the Sky" (a
small wine bar). Windows on the World also had a wine school
program run by
Kevin Zraly. Windows on
the World was closed following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Upon reopening in 1996, Hors d'Oeuvrerie and Cellar in the Sky were
replaced with the "Greatest Bar on Earth" and "Wild Blue". In 2000,
its last full year of operation, Windows on the World reported
revenues of $37 million, making it the highest-grossing restaurant
in the United States.
Other buildings
Five smaller buildings stood around the 16 acre (65,000
m
2) block. One was the 22-floor hotel which opened in
1981 as the Vista Hotel and in 1995 became the
Marriott World Trade Center (3
WTC) at the southwest corner of the site. Three low-rise buildings
(4 WTC, 5 WTC, and 6 WTC) in the same hollow tube design as the
towers also stood around the plaza.
6 World Trade Center
, at the northwest corner, housed the United States Customs
Service and the U.S.
Commodities Exchange.
5 World Trade
Center
was located at the northeast corner above the
PATH
station
and 4 World Trade Center
was at the southeast corner. In 1987, a 47-floor
office building called 7 WTC
was built north of the block. Beneath the World
Trade Center complex was an underground shopping mall
which in turn had connections to various mass transit facilities
including the New York City
Subway system and the Port Authority's own PATH
trains connecting Manhattan to Jersey
City
, Hoboken, and Newark.
One of the world's largest gold depositories was stored underneath
the World Trade Center, owned by a group of commercial banks. The
1993 bomb detonated close by the vault held. Seven weeks after the
September 11 attacks, $230 million in precious metals were removed
from basement vaults of 4 WTC which included 3,800 100-Troy-ounce
registered gold bars and 30,000 1,000-ounce
silver bars.
Life and events
On a typical weekday 50,000 people worked in the towers with
another 200,000 passing through as visitors.
The complex was so
large that it had its own zip code: 10048
. The towers offered expansive views from the
observation deck atop the South Tower and the
Windows on the
World restaurant on top of the North Tower.
The Twin Towers
became known worldwide, appearing in numerous movies and television
shows as well as on postcards and other merchandise, and became
seen as a New York icon, in the same league as the Empire State
Building
, Chrysler Building
and the Statue of Liberty
.
French high wire acrobatic performer
Philippe Petit walked between the towers on a
tightrope in 1974, as shown in the documentary film
Man on Wire. Brooklyn toymaker
George Willig scaled the south tower in
1977.
In
1983, on
Memorial
Day, high-rise firefighting and rescue advocate,
Dan Goodwin, for the purpose of calling
attention to the inability to rescue people trapped in the upper
floors of skyscrapers, successfully climbed the outside of the
World Trade Center's
North Tower.
The
1995 PCA
world chess championship was played on the 107th floor of the
South Tower.
In January 1998, Mafia member
Ralph
Guarino, who had gained maintenance access to the World Trade
Center, arranged a three-man crew for a heist which netted over $2
million from a Brink's delivery to the eleventh floor of the World
Trade Center.
February 13, 1975 fire
On February 13, 1975, a three-alarm fire broke out on the 11th
floor of the North Tower. Fire spread through the core to the 9th
and 14th floors by igniting the insulation of telephone cables in a
utility shaft that ran vertically between floors. Areas at the
furthest extent of the fire were extinguished almost immediately
and the original fire was put out in a few hours. Most of the
damage was concentrated on the 11th floor, fueled by cabinets
filled with paper, alcohol-based fluid for office machines, and
other office equipment.
Fireproofing
protected the steel from melting and there was no structural damage
to the tower. Other than the damage caused by the fire, a few
floors below suffered water damage from the extinguishing of the
fires above. At that time, the World Trade Center had no
sprinkler systems.
February 26, 1993 bombing
On February 26, 1993, at 12:17 p.m., a
Ryder
truck filled with 1,500
pounds
(680 kg) of explosives, planted by
Ramzi Yousef, detonated in the underground
garage of the North Tower. The blast opened a 100 foot
(30 m) hole through five sublevels with the greatest damage
occurring on levels B1 and B2 and significant structural damage on
level B3. Six people were killed and 50,000 other workers and
visitors were left gasping for air within the 110 story towers.
Many people inside the North Tower were forced to walk down
darkened stairwells that contained no emergency lighting, some
taking two hours or more to reach safety.

Damage underground due to the
bombing
Yousef
fled to Pakistan after the bombing but was arrested in Islamabad
in February 1995, and was extradited back to the
United States to face trial. Sheikh
Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1996
for involvement in the bombing and other plots. Yousef and
Eyad Ismoil were convicted in November 1997 for
their carrying out the bombing. Four others had been convicted in
May 1994 for their involvement in the 1993 bombing. According to a
presiding judge, the conspirators' chief aim at the time of the
attack was to destabilize the north tower and send it crashing into
the south tower, toppling both landmarks.
Following the bombing, floors that were blown out needed to be
repaired to restore the structural support they provided to
columns. The slurry wall was in peril following the bombing and
loss of the floor slabs which provided lateral support to
counteract pressure from Hudson River water on the other side. The
refrigeration plant on sublevel B5,
which provided
air conditioning to
the entire World Trade Center complex, was heavily damaged.
Subsequent to the bombing, the Port Authority installed
photoluminescent markings in the
stairwells. The
fire alarm system
for the entire complex needed to be replaced because critical
wiring and signaling in the original system was destroyed. As a
memorial to the victims of the bombing of the tower, a
reflecting pool was installed with the names
of those who had been killed in the blast. However, the memorial
was destroyed following the
September 11 attacks. A new memorial is
planned to be built honoring the victims of the bombing together
with the 9/11 attacks on the New World Trade Center site.
Lease
In 1998, the Port Authority approved plans to privatize the World
Trade Center. In 2001, the Port Authority sought to lease the World
Trade Center to a private entity. Bids for the lease came from
Vornado Realty Trust, a joint
bid between
Brookfield
Properties Corporation and
Boston
Properties, and a joint bid by
Silverstein Properties and
The Westfield Group. By privatizing the
World Trade Center, it would be added to the city's tax rolls and
provide funds for other Port Authority projects. On February 15,
2001, the Port Authority announced that Vornado Trust Realty had
won the lease for the World Trade Center, paying $3.25 billion for
the 99-year lease.
Vornado
Realty outbid Silverstein by $600 million though Silverstein
upped his offer to $3.22 billion. However, Vornado insisted on last
minute changes to the deal, including a shorter 39-year lease which
the Port Authority considered nonnegotiable. Vornado later withdrew
and Silverstein's bid for the lease to the World Trade Center was
accepted on April 26, 2001, and closed on July 24, 2001.
Destruction

The World Trade Center on fire with
the Statue of Liberty in the foreground
On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked
American Airlines Flight 11 and
crashed it into the northern facade of the north tower at 08:46,
impacting between the 93rd and 99th floors. Seventeen minutes
later, a second team of terrorists crashed the similarly hijacked
United Airlines Flight
175 into the south tower, impacting between the 77th and 85th
floors. The damage caused to the north tower by Flight 11
destroyed any means of escape from above the impact zone, trapping
1,344 people. Flight 175 had a much more off-centered impact
compared to flight 11, and a single stairwell was left intact,
however only a few people managed to successfully pass through it
before the tower collapsed. Although the south tower's floors of
impact were lower, a smaller number, less than 700, were killed
instantly or trapped, because evacuation of the south tower was
ordered immediately after the north tower strike. At 9:59 a.m., the
south tower
collapsed due to fire
which caused steel structural elements, already weakened from the
plane impact, to fail. The north tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m.,
after burning for approximately 102 minutes.
At 5:21
p.m. on September 11, 2001, 7 World Trade Center
collapsed due to uncontrolled fires causing
structural failure. 3 World
Trade Center, a Marriott hotel, was destroyed during the
collapse of the two towers. The three remaining buildings in the
WTC plaza sustained heavy damage from debris and were ultimately
demolished.
The Deutsche Bank Building
across Liberty Street from the World
Trade Center complex was later condemned due to the uninhabitable
toxic conditions inside; it is undergoing deconstruction.
The
Borough of Manhattan Community
College
's Fiterman Hall at 30 West Broadway was also condemned
due to extensive damage in the attacks and is slated for deconstruction.
In the aftermath of the attacks, media reports suggested that tens
of thousands might have been killed in the attacks, as on any given
day upwards of 50,000 people could be inside the towers.
Ultimately, 2,750 death certificates were filed relating to the
9/11 attacks, including one filed for Felicia Dunn-Jones, who was
added to the official death toll in May 2007; Dunn-Jones died five
months later from a lung condition linked to exposure to dust
during the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., an investment bank
on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658
employees, considerably more than any other employer, while
Marsh & McLennan
Companies, located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on
floors 93–101 (the location of
Flight 11's impact), lost 295
employees, and 175 employees of
Aon
Corporation were killed. As well, 343 deaths were
New York City firefighters, 84
were Port Authority employees, of whom 37 were members of the
Port Authority Police
Department, and another 23 were
New York City Police
Department officers. Of all the people who were still in the
towers when they collapsed, only 20 were pulled out alive.
Rebuilding

A rendering of the future World Trade
Center.
The process of cleanup and recovery continued 24 hours a day over a
period of eight months.
Debris was transported from the World Trade
Center site
to Fresh Kills on
Staten
Island
, where it was further sifted. On May 30,
2002, a ceremony was held to officially mark the end of the cleanup
efforts.
In 2002, ground was broken on construction
of a new 7 World Trade
Center
building located just to the north of the main
World Trade Center site. Since it was not part of the site
master plan, Larry Silverstein was able to proceed without delay on
the rebuilding of 7 World Trade Center which was completed and
officially opened in May 2006.
A temporary PATH
station
at the World Trade Center opened in November 2003;
it will be replaced by a permanent station designed by Santiago Calatrava.
With the
main World Trade Center site, numerous stakeholders were involved
including Silverstein and the Port Authority which in turn meant
that the Governor of New York State
, George Pataki, had
some authority. As well, the victims' families, people in
the surrounding neighborhoods, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg and others wanted input.
Governor Pataki established the
Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation (LMDC) in November 2001 as an official
commission to oversee the rebuilding process. The LMDC held a
competition to solicit possible designs for the site. The
Memory Foundations design by
Daniel Libeskind was chosen as the master
plan for the World Trade Center site.
The plan included the
1,776-foot (541 m) Freedom Tower
(now known as One World Trade Center) as
well as a memorial and a number of other office towers. Out
of the
World Trade Center
Site Memorial Competition, a design by
Michael Arad and Peter Walker entitled
Reflecting Absence was selected in January 2004.
On March 13, 2006, workers arrived at the World Trade Center site
to remove remaining debris and start surveying work. This marked
the official start of construction of the
National September
11 Memorial & Museum, though not without controversy and
concerns from some family members. In April 2006, the Port
Authority and Larry Silverstein reached an agreement in which
Silverstein ceded rights to develop the Freedom Tower and Tower
Five in exchange for financing with
Liberty Bonds for Towers Two, Three, and Four.
On April 27, 2006, a ground-breaking ceremony was held for the
Freedom Tower.
In May 2006, architects
Richard
Rogers and
Fumihiko Maki were
announced as the architects for Towers Three and Four,
respectively. The final designs for Towers Two, Three and Four were
unveiled on September 7, 2006.
Tower Two, or 200
Greenwich Street
, will have a roof height of 1,254 feet (382 m) and
a 96-foot (29 m) tripod spire for a total of 1,350 feet (411
m). Tower Three, or 175
Greenwich Street
will have a roof height of 1,155 feet (352 m) and
an antennae height reaching 1,255 feet (383 m). Tower Four, or
150
Greenwich Street
, will have an overall height of 946 feet (288
m). On June 22, 2007 the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey announced that JP
Morgan Chase will build Tower 5
, a 42-story building on Site 5 currently occupied
by the Deutsche Bank Building, and Kohn Pedersen Fox was selected as the
architect for the building.
Controversy
The
construction of 1 World Trade Center
has been met with criticism, ranging from the
design itself to the name change. New York City mayor,
Michael Bloomberg stated in 2003 that, "The Freedom Tower isn't
going to be One World Trade Center, it's going to be the Freedom
Tower." In 2005,
Donald Trump lashed
out at the design of the then Freedom Tower, calling it, "a
terrible design".
The WTC American flag
Following the collapse of the towers after the 9/11 attacks, at
5:30 a.m. on the morning of September 12, 2001,
New York City Police Sergeant Gerald
Kane and Detective Peter Friscia were assisting rescue teams at
“
Ground Zero”. They noticed that the
large American flag that once flew in front of the World Trade
Center at Church Street had been blown off the flagpole during the
implosion of the buildings and was tangled upside down on a
streetlight several feet away. The two men recruited a number of
soldiers and firefighters in the area who hoisted a ladder to the
top of the streetlight. Detective Friscia climbed the rungs of the
ladder to the top, untangled and retrieved the flag and brought it
down to the ground.
Kerik later released the flag to NASA
officials
and it was transported aboard the space
shuttle Endeavor (STS-108) as part of its December
5-17, 2001, mission to the International Space Station.
On
Flag Day, June 14, 2002, the American flag
was returned to the people of New York City by Sean O’Keefe of NASA
and Commander Dom Gorie and the crew members of the
Endeavor, in a ceremony at the Rose Center at the American
Museum of Natural History
. Today, this flag is secured and maintained
by New York City’s Commissioner of Records and is part of the
annual 9/11 ceremony at Ground Zero.
Popular culture
The World Trade Center was an iconic structure and has been
featured in numerous films as well as appearing in many television
shows, cartoons, comic books, video games and music videos.
Portions of
Godspell were
filmed at the top of the World Trade Center as the building was
nearing completion.
A sequence in the Robert Redford movie
The Hot Rock filmed in
Summer 1971 featured shots of a helicopter flying around the
partially uncompleted towers (where you can actually see inside the
construction at one point), The final scene of the 1976 film
King Kong took place
at the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State
Building
where the scene had taken place in the original
film. The 1983 film
Trading
Places was filmed outside the WTC, as well as on the
New York Board of Trade floor at 4
WTC. Using a glider, Snake Plissken lands on the top of WTC 1 in
the 1981 film
Escape from New
York.
The events surrounding the September 11 attacks were portrayed in
several documentaries and movies, including two major motion
pictures made in 2006:
Oliver Stone's
World Trade
Center and
Paul Greengrass'
United 93. Several movies
released shortly after 9/11 digitally erased the Twin Towers from
skyline shots; one such was
Spider-Man. , most networks airing
reruns of popular television shows have chosen to leave the Twin
Towers alone such as in
establishing
shots in
Friends and
in episodes of
The Simpsons.
Shots of the World Trade Center were removed from both of the
opening sequences of
HBO's
Sex and The City and
The Sopranos in episodes produced after
the destruction of the buildings as a mark of respect for the
victims of 9/11.
In the season finale of the
Fox series,
Fringe, the World Trade Center is
seen intact in a parallel universe of New York City.
See also
References
- Gillespie (1999), pp. 32–33
- Gillespie (1999), pp. 34–35
- Gillespie (1999), p. 38
- Cudahy (2002), p. 56
- Gillespie (1999), pp. 75–78
- Ruchelman (1977), p. 11
- Gillespie (1999), p. 76
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1 (2005), p. 7
- Darton (1999), p. 32–34
- NIST NCSTAR 1 (2005), p. 1
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1 (2005), pp. 40–42
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1 (2005), p. 10
- NIST NCSTAR 1 (2005), p. 8
- NIST NCSTAR 1 (2005), pp. 8–9
- NIST NCSTAR 1 (2005), p. 10
- Glanz and Lipton (2003), p. 138
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1A (2005), p. 65
- Glanz and Lipton (2003), p. 139–144
- Glanz and Lipton (2003), p. 160–167
- Gillespie (1999), p. 61
- Gillespie (1999), p. 68
- Gillespie (1999), p. 71
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1, p. xxxvi
- Cudahy (2002), p. 58
- Gillespie (1999), p. 134
- Gillespie (1999), pp. 42–44
- Gillespie (1999), pp. 49–50
- " office locations." Cantor
Fitzgerald. March 4, 2000. Retrieved on October 4, 2009.
- Darton (1999), p. 152
- Rediff.com. Reuters, November 17, 2001: Buried
WTC gold returns to futures trade. Retrieved December 1,
2008.
- Darton (1999), p. 204
- Darton (1999), p. 8
- Gillespie (1999), p. 5
- Glanz and Lipton (2003), p. 219
- Gillespie (1999), p. 149
- "Skyscrapers." National Geographic magazine.
February 1989 - Goodwin, Dan "Spider Dan" World Trade Center climb
(1983), p 169
- SkyscraperDefense.com
- Reeve (1999), p. 10
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1 (2005), p. 34; pp. 45–46
- FEMA: World Trade Center Building Performance
Study, ch. 5, section 5.5.4
- http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/18/wtc.trump/
- http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/14660/
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7832944/
- http://thepillarofstrength.com/?p=140
-
http://memles.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/season-finale-fringe-theres-more-than-one-of-everything/
Further reading
External links