- Generic alternative meaning: World trade
center
The World Trade Center in New York City was a complex
of several buildings around a central plaza, near the foot of Manhattan; three of
the original buildings were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was designed by American architect Minoru Yamasaki with Antonio Brittiochi, and was
one of the most striking American implementations of the architectural ethic of Le Corbusier, as well as the seminal expression of Yamasaki's gothic modernist tendencies. Constructed in the
early 1970s under the auspices of the semi-autonomous Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the WTC had its ribbon-cutting
ceremony on April 4, 1973. Ultimately the
complex came to consist of 7 buildings, but its most notable features were the main twin towers. On any given day, some 50,000
people worked in the towers.
Although the towers became an undeniable icon of New York City, they were not without their flaws and were troubled in many
ways. Initially conceived (as the name suggests) as a complex dedicated to companies and organizations directly involved in
"world trade," they at first failed to attract the anticipated clientele; during its early years various governmental
organizations became key tenants. The Towers began receiving private companies, mostly financial firms tied to Wall Street, as
tenants during the early 1980's, as the city climbed out of the financial crisis that had nearly bankrupted it in the 1970's.
Moreover, the immense "superblock" plaza they sat upon, which replaced a more traditional, dense-packed neighborhood, was
regarded by some critics as an inhospitable environment that disrupted the intricate flows of traffic typical of Manhattan. For
example, in his book The Pentagon of Power, the technical historian Lewis Mumford denounced them as an "example of the purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism that
are now eviscerating the living tissue of every great city." However, the spectacular views available from the WTC's observation
deck (located on top of the South Tower) and the fancy restaurant called Windows on the World (located on top of the North Tower) made up for its flaws by offering
city-dwellers and tourists alike a perspective on the region that became central to the city's identity.
The Twin Towers
Each of the WTC towers had 110 stories. The heights of the towers were 417 m (1368 ft) (tower one, the North Tower with a huge
antenna on top) and 415 m (1362 ft) (tower two, the South Tower with the observation deck). When the towers were completed in
1972 (tower one) and 1973 (tower two) they were the tallest buildings on earth, 30 m (100 ft) taller than the Empire State Building. Their size was the subject of a joke
during a press conference unveiling the landmarks. 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."
Another joke was that the towers looked like the boxes that the Chrysler Building and Empire State
Building came out of.
For a time the local television station on Channel 11 used the towers as a graphic
representation of its channel number.
The WTC towers held the height record only briefly. As the building neared completion in 1973, work had already begun on
Chicago's Sears Tower, which
would ultimately climb to 1,450 ft (442 m). With the World Trade Center's destruction, the Empire State Building again became the tallest building in New York, after spending almost 30
years as the third-tallest.
To solve the problem of wind sway or vibration in the construction of the towers chief engineer Leslie Robertson took a then unusual approach - instead of bracing the
buildings corner-to-corner or using internal walls the towers were essentially hollow steel tubes. Each tower thus contained 240
vertical steel columns called Vierendeel trusses around the outside of the building, which were bound to each other using
ordinary steel trusses. In addition, 10,000 dampers were included in the structure. With a strong shell such as this, the
internal floors could be simply light steel and concrete with internal walls not needed for structural integrity, creating a
tower that for its size was extremely light. This method of construction also meant that the twin towers had the world's highest
load-bearing walls. The exterior steel supports were spaced 22 inches apart, and narrow windows filled the gaps in between.
Of the 110 stories twelve were set aside for technical services, in four three-floor areas evenly spread up the building. All
the remaining floors were free for open-plan offices. Each tower had 350,000 m² (3.8 million ft²) of office space, ample room for
companies to set up shop. Altogether the entire complex of seven buildings had 11.2 million ft² (1 km²) of space. During the
1990s some 500 companies, especially financial firms, had offices in the complex, including Morgan Stanley, Aon Corporation, Salomon Brothers, and the Port Authority itself.
The Twins were also the first supertall buildings to use sky lobbies, spaces where commuters can switch from one local
elevator to another. Located on the 44th and 77 floors of each tower, those sky lobbies enabled the elevators (each tower had
104) to be used efficiently while taking up a minimum of valuable office space.
At least five smaller buildings stood around the 16 acre (65,000 m²) superblock. One was the 22-floor Vista Hotel, later a
Marriott Hotel, that was squeezed between the two towers. Three low-rise buildings in the same hollow tube design as the towers
also stood around the plaza; they housed the US Customs Service and the US Commodities Exchange. In 1987, a 46-floor office
building called 7 WTC was built north of the superblock. Under the superblock was a highly profitable underground shopping mall,
which in turn led to various mass transit facilities, particularly the New York City subway system and the Port Authority's own
PATH trains connecting Manhattan to Jersey City.
The excavation of the foundations of the building, known as the Bathtub,
located on the former Radio Row, was particularly complicated since there were
two subway tubes close by needing protection without service interruption. A six-level
basement was built in the foundations. Excavation of about 1 million cubic yards (760,000 m³) of earth and rock created a $90
million real estate asset for the project owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which helped offset the enormous
loss in revenues which came from the tax breaks given to the Trade Center itself. The soil was used to create 23 acres of
landfill in the Hudson river next to the World Trade Center site, which
became the site of Battery Park City (still under
development).
World Trade Center site, January 2003
The linear, sloping structure in the middle of the pit is the lines 1 and 9 subway tube
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 to the vault, but it withstood the explosion, as did the towers. One source estimates the
1993 value of the gold at one billion dollars, believed to be owned by Kuwaiti
interests. That same source claims that when the World Trade Center was destroyed, the amount of gold "far exceed[ed] the 1993
levels." The gold was finally recovered in its entirety in late 2001.
See World Trade Center site for reconstruction
news.
1993 terrorist attack
1993 World Trade Center bombing: On February 26, 1993, a bomb planted by terrorists exploded in the underground garage of
the north tower, opening a 30m hole through 4 sublevels of concrete. Six people were killed and over a thousand injured. Six Islamic extremist conspirators were convicted of the crime in 1997 and 1998 and given prison sentences of 240 years each.
Some observers cite this attack as the opening salvo of the Second
Cold War, this one pitting the Islamic world against the Western-style
democracies, especially the United States and Israel.
2001 terrorist attack
The twin towers and 7 World Trade Center collapsed in a
terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, when two commercial jetliners were deliberately crashed into the twin towers. For details on this terrorist
attack, see September 11, 2001
Terrorist Attack. For details of the tenants at the time of the attack, see One World Trade Center tenants and Two World Trade Center tenants.
The World Trade Center is slated to be rebuilt as the 1776 ft (541 m) Freedom Tower and the Memory Foundations
complex of buildings.
The Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation, the agency tasked with coordinating the reconstruction of the WTC site sponsored an international
design competition for the World Trade Center
Memorial in spring 2003. The winning design, Michael Arad and Peter Walker's Reflecting Absence, was chosen in January 2004.
World Trade Center buildings
See also
External links
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