Top Of The World Trade Center Observatories
The World Trade Center is a complex of buildings under construction in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States, replacing an earlier complex of seven buildings with the same name on the same site. The original World Trade Center featured landmark twin towers, which opened on April 4, 1973 and were destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001, along with 7 World Trade Center. The other buildings in the complex were damaged in the attacks, and their ruins were eventually demolished. The site is being rebuilt with five new skyscrapers and a memorial to those killed in the attacks. As of November 2011, only one skyscraper has been completed; the other four are expected to be completed before 2020. One World Trade Center will be the lead building for the new complex, reaching more than 100 stories at its completion. It became the tallest building in New York City on April 30, 2012, and is expected to be finished by 2013. A sixth tower is awaiting confirmation.
At the time of their completion, the original 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower) and 2 World Trade Center (the South Tower), known collectively as the "Twin Towers", were the tallest buildings in the world. The other buildings included 3 WTC (the Marriott World Trade Center), 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. All of these buildings were built between 1975 and 1985. The cost for the construction was $400 million ($2,300,000,000 in 2013 dollars). 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 World Trade Center experienced a fire on February 13, 1975, a bombing on February 26, 1993 and a robbery on January 14, 1998. 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.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two Boeing 767 jets into the complex, one into each tower, in a coordinated terrorist 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 2,753 deaths. Falling debris from the towers, combined with fires that the debris initiated in several surrounding buildings, led to the partial or complete collapse of all the other buildings in the complex and caused catastrophic damage to ten other large structures in the surrounding area. The process of cleanup and recovery at the World Trade Center site took eight months.
Over the following years, plans for a rebuilt World Trade Center took form. 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, but this went through substantial changes in design. The new World Trade Center complex will include One World Trade Center, three other high-rise office towers, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Read more about Top Of The World Trade Center Observatories: Planning and Construction, Life and Events, Destruction, New Buildings, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words top of the, top of, top, world, trade and/or center:
““There is Lowell, who’s striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can’t with that bundle he has on his shoulders,
The top of the hill he will ne’er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction ‘twixt singing and preaching;”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“All of the valuable qualities ... like helping in the development of others—will not get you to the top at General Motors, were that path open to women.... The characteristics most highly developed in women and perhaps most essential to human beings are the very characteristics that are specifically dysfunctional for success in the world as it is.... They may, however, be the important ones for making the world different.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“Suddenly I realized the power I held, the power to rule, to make the world grovel at my feet. We’ll soon put the world right now, Kemp. You and I.”
—R.C. Sherriff (1896–1975)
“You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)