To piece the steel frame of the building together, engineers brought in Australian-made “kangaroo” cranes, self-powered cranes powered by diesel motors that could hoist themselves up as the building grew higher.Īt the end of construction, these cranes had to be disassembled and brought down by elevator. The Port Authority used this landfill to create the $90 million worth of land that would become Battery Park City. Called the “bathtub,” it was used to seal the basements of the towers and keep water from the Hudson River out of the foundation.Īll in all, one million cubic yards of landfill had to be removed. In this way, the “skin” of the building would be strong enough that internal columns wouldn’t be necessary to hold it together.īy making more than 150 of these slurry trench segments, workers enclosed an area two blocks wide and four blocks long. Floor trusses connected this exterior steel lattice to the central steel core of the building. Instead of the traditional stacked glass-and-steel box construction of many New York skyscrapers, Yamasaki worked with structural engineers to come up with a revolutionary design: two hollow tubes, supported by closely spaced steel columns encased in aluminum. To fulfill the Port Authority’s requirement, architect Minoru Yamasaki designed two towers of 110 stories each. Sights Set on Record-Breaking Heightīy this time, the Port Authority had decided that the trade center should replace the 1,250-foot-high Empire State Building, built in 1931, as the world’s tallest building. After a bitter legal battle with representatives of the Radio Row merchants, the Port Authority won the right to continue its plan.
The PATH terminal was on the west side of Lower Manhattan, and Tobin’s team decided to move the prospective trade center location from east to west, combining the two projects.Ī region bounded by Vesey, Church, Liberty and West Streets–known as “Radio Row” for its many consumer electronics shops–would have to be razed for the trade center to be built. The Port Authority had just agreed to take over and renovate New Jersey’s Hudson and Manhattan commuter railroad, the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) train, built in 1908. Market research indicated that the city would benefit more by modernizing its ports, however, and the plan was soon scrapped. Aldrich, headed a new state agency with the proposed goal of creating a permanent trade exposition based in New York.
The 1939 New York World’s Fair included an exhibit called the World Trade Center that was dedicated to the concept of “world peace through trade.” Seven years later, one of the exhibit’s organizers, Winthrop W. The disaster also radically altered the skyline of New York City, destroying the twin columns of glass and steel that over the years had come to embody the city itself. On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center became the target of a massive terrorist attack that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people. They were the hub of the bustling Financial District, a top tourist attraction and a symbol of New York City’s–and America’s–steadfast devotion to progress and the future. Completed in 1973, the towers stood at 110 stories each, accommodating 50,000 workers and 200,000 daily visitors in 10 million square feet of space.
The iconic twin towers of downtown Manhattan’s World Trade Center were a triumph of human imagination and will. The World Trade Center on September 11th.Feats of Engineering at the World Trade Center.