The iconic World Trade Center of downtown Manhattan’s World Trade Center were a triumph of human imagination and might. The towers stood at one hundred ten stories every being completed in 1973 whereas accommodating around 50,000 employees and 200,000 daily guests in ten million sq. feet of house.
It became a prime traveler attraction and an emblem of New York City’s–and America’s–steadfast devotion to progress and also the future as resulted as they became the hub of the active monetary District.
On 9/11, 2001, the World Trade Center became the target of an enormous onset that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people. The disaster additionally radically altered the skyline of latest New York city, destroying the twin columns of glass and steel that over the years had return to embody the city itself.
World Trade Center: A Dream Is Born
The 1939 New York World’s honest enclosed an exhibit referred to as the world Trade Center that was dedicated to the idea of “world peace through trade.”
Seven years later, one in every of the exhibit’s organizers, Winthrop W. Aldrich, headed a brand new state agency with the planned goal of making a permanent trade exposition based mostly in New York.
Marketing research indicated that the town would profit additional by modernizing its ports, however, and also the arrange was presently scrapped.
Aldrich’s kinsman, David Rockefeller didn’t forget the thought. The grandchild of ordinary Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, David set to revive the World Trade Center idea because the core of a revived lower Manhattan.
In May 1959, Rockefeller shaped the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association that planned a $250 million complicated close to the artificer Fish Market on the East River, as well as one 70-story workplace tower and several other smaller buildings.
The Port Authority Signs On:
For the resources and power to create the project work, John Davison Rockefeller turned to the Port of New York Authority. The Port Authority had been chartered in 1921 by New York and New Jersey to create and operate all transportation terminals and facilities inside a 25-mile radius of the statue of Liberty.
By 1960, once constructing the Lincoln Tunnel and also the George Washington Bridge, the Port Authority was speedily increasing its influence, with 5,000 workers and quite $1 billion in freight and transportation structures all presided over by its powerful director, Austin J. Tobin.
The Port Authority had simply in agreement to require over and renovate New Jersey’s Hudson and Manhattan commuter railroad, the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) train, inbuilt 1908.
The PATH terminal was on the side of Lower Manhattan, and Tobin’s team determined to maneuver the potential trade center location from east to west, combining the 2 projects.
A vicinity delimited by Vesey, Church, Liberty and West Streets–known as “Radio Row” for its several shopper electronics shops–would got to be demolished for the trade center to be engineered.
Once a bitter legal battle with representatives of the Radio Row merchants, the Port Authority won the correct to continue its arrange.
Sights Set on Record-Breaking Height:
By now, the Port Authority had determined that the trade center ought to replace the 1,250-foot-high New York Building, inbuilt 1931, because the world’s tallest building. to meet the Port Authority’s demand, designer Minoru Yamasaki designed 2 towers of one hundred ten stories every.
Rather than the standard stacked glass-and-steel box construction of the many New York skyscrapers, Yamasaki worked with structural engineers to come back up with a revolutionary design: two hollow tubes, supported by closely spaced steel columns sheathed in aluminum.
Floor trusses connected this exterior steel lattice to the central steel core of the building. During this method, the “skin” of the building would be robust enough that internal columns wouldn’t be necessary to carry it along.
Construction began in February 1967, once the Port Authority faced down criticism regarding the towers’ safety and viability from several powerful figures, as well as property big businessman (and Empire State Building owner) Lawrence Wien.
Wien even ran a commercial within the New York Times in May 1968 predicting that a commercial airplane was doubtless to fly into the towers.
Plans had already been created to protect against such an accident–which had happened in July 1945 with a smaller plane at the Empire State–and the towers were designed to be safe in a very collision with a completely loaded 707 plane (the largest existing plane at the time).
It had been assumed such a plane would got to be lost in fog for such an incident to occur; a act of terrorism was never visualized.
Feats of Engineering at the world Trade Center:
View of the world Trade Center beneath construction, with a proof asserting the completion schedule, circa 1969. Because the ground in lower Manhattan was mostly lowland, engineers would got to dig down seventy feet to achieve bedrock.
Excavating machines needed to dig a three-foot-wide trench right down to the bedrock, and as dirt and rock were removed, they were replaced by slurry: a mix of water and clay, a kind of clay that expands once wet to plug any hole on the side of the ditch.
Employees then lowered a 22-ton, seven-story-high steel cage into the ditch and crammed it with concrete by employing a long pipe. Because the concrete flowed in, it displaced the clay suspension.
By creating quite a hundred and fifty of those suspension trench segments, employees enclosed vicinity two blocks wide and four blocks long. Referred to as the “bathtub,” it had been used to seal the basements of the towers and keep water from the Hudson River out of the muse.
All in all, a million blockish yards of lowland had to be removed. The Port Authority used this lowland to form the $90 million value of land that will become Battery Park town.
To piece the steel frame of the building along, engineers brought in Australian-made “kangaroo” cranes, self-powered cranes powered by diesel motors that might hoist themselves up because the building grew higher.
At the tip of construction, these cranes had to be disassembled and brought down by elevator. once the towers were finished, everyone would have ninety seven rider elevators, capable of carrying numerous up to 10,000 pounds at speeds of up to 1,600 feet per minute.
In all, the towers were assembled from quite 200,000 items of steel factory-made round the country, 3,000 miles of electrical wiring, 425,000 blockish yards of concrete, 40,000 doors, 43,600 windows and 6 acres of marble.
World Trade Center: A Dream Come True:
On December 23, 1970 the last piece of steel was put in place on the north tower (One World Trade Center) while in July of the next year the south tower (Two World Trade Center) was topped off.
Construction was extended as the five-acre outdoor plaza, dominated by a 25-foot-tall bronze sculpture by Fritz Koenig was completed on until April 1973.
The Governor Nelson Rockefeller (David’s brother) proclaimed triumphantly at the official ribbon cutting ceremony on April 4, “It’s not too often that we see a dream come true. Today, we have.”
At 1,360 feet, the World Trade Center towers though only for less than a year were the tallest buildings in the world but eventually they were surpassed by Chicago’s Sears Tower.
Still, incomparable mystiques were held by the towers. Beginning in August 1974, with Philippe Petit walking a high wire between the two towers the towers inspired some incredible stunts.
In May 1977, the nickname of “the Human Fly” was earned by George Willing when he hoisted himself to the top of the south tower using homemade climbing devices.
The towers were endeared to the public and made them seem like giant toys as the Port Authority also loved those stunts.
It helped them adding the Windows on the World restaurant -as the stunts turned the towers into attraction-which opened on the 107th floor of the north tower in April 1976 and was an immediate hit.
By 1983, the space of World Trade Center was in high demand and their revenue jumped to $204 million. Major businesses were made their way as smaller importers-exporters were being pushed out by rising rents.
1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center:
On February 26, 1993, the first major test of the trade center’s structural integrity came when in the parking garage of the second floor basement of the north tower a bomb with the destructive power equal to 2,200 pounds of TNT exploded.
The blast injured more than 1,000 others and killed six people as well as caused an estimated $600 million in damage. In connection with the plot six Islamic extremists were trialed and convicted.
New security measures were in place which included restrictions to parking lot access and electronic identification badges for building tenants when the towers reopened 20 days after the bombing.
The Port Authority spent a total of $700 million on renovations over the next eight years, where they upgraded safety measures such as battery-powered stairway lights and a separate emergency command center in each building.
“The Bunker”, which was a high-tech emergency operations command center was set up at 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story office building adjoining the towers by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The World Trade Center on September 11th:
In July 2001, the Port Authority agreed to lease the twin towers to Larry Silverstein, a New York City developer just two months before the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Over the next 99 years Silverstein agreed to pay the equivalent of $3.2 billion. At the time, the Port Authority occupies over 99 percent of the 10.4 million square feet.
On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was hit by two planes and had a devastating impact which none of the building’s designers and engineers had ever imagined.
The first plane caused massive structural damage and igniting some 3,000 of the 10,000 gallons of jet fuel the plane was carrying as it ripped a hole in the north tower from the 94th to the 98th floors.
On the contrary the south tower got hit an even faster speed by the second plane, as it struck the corner gashing the building from the 84th to the 78th floors.
Around 25,000 people escaped from the site on 9/11 before the unthinkable occurred with the heroic efforts of the city’s fire and police departments and other emergency services.
The undamaged part below the hole had to support the floors above as the damage done at each point of impact forced the physical weight of the towers to be redistributed.
At the same time, the steel trusses holding up each floor got weakened by the fires raging in both buildings.
The south tower gave way first being damaged to a greater number of floors lower down on the building; it crumbled to the ground only 56 minutes after being hit at 9:59 a.m. while less than a half hour later, at 10:28 a.m. the north tower collapsed.
The remaining buildings of the trade center complex, including 7 World Trade burned for most of the day before collapsing at 5:20 p.m. which got ignited by the debris from the falling towers.
New Yorkers and people around the world trained their eyes on “Ground Zero,” being overwhelmed by horror, shock and grief, to see the fall of a treasured icon of American industry and ingenuity which had left a gaping hole in the sky.
One World Trade Center:
One World Trade Center, or “The Freedom Tower” would eventually fill that hole in the sky which was built to honor who lost their lives and rises even higher than the Twin Towers.
At a symbolic 1,776 feet tall, overtaking Sears Tower in Chicago One World Trade is the tallest building in the United States and Western Hemisphere. Architect Daniel Libeskind designed the tower to be an asymmetrical tower inspired by the Statue of Liberty built on the original 6 World Trade Center.
In 2004, architect David Childs took over who was known for designing both the Burj Khalifa and the Willis Tower. The building did not open until November 3, 2014 although the cornerstone was laid on July 4, 2004.
Topped off by One World Observatory, an observation deck, bar, and restaurant which opens to the public the One World Trade is 104 stories tall and has three million square feet of office space. It offers visitors panoramic views of New York City spanning from floors 100-102.
Rebuilding the World Trade Center:
A new tower at seven World Trade Center opened in 2006. The $2 billion four World Trade Center followed in 2013.
The World Trade Center was built with a glass and steel transit concourse and store designed by the Spanish designer Santiago Calatrava, opened to the general public in 2016.
Whereas the one, 155 foot tall three World Trade Center opened in 2018. Silverstein’s two World Trade Center and five World Trade Center stay incomplete. The remodeled 16-acre World Trade Center site additionally includes the National 9/11 Memorial designed by Michael Arad.
His design, “Reflecting Absence,” includes 2 reflective pools within the footprints of the previous WTC enclosed by bronze panels with the names of all two, 983 victims of the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks.
Written by: Gourav Chowdhury
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