WTC
Some interesting related "facts"
THE "COINCIDENCE" OF THE NUMBER 11
The American Terrorist attack happened on 11/9, when added together 1+1+9=11.
Sept. 11th is the 254th day of the year, 2+5+4=11.
After 11th Sept. there are 111 days left to the end of the year.
119 is the area code to Iraq/Iran.
Twin towers standing side by side looked like the number 11.
The first plane to hit the tower was Flight 11.
State of New York - the 11th state added to the union.
New York City has 11 letters.
Afghanistan has 11 letters.
The Pentagon has 11 letters.
Flight 11 - 92 on board: 9+2=11
Flight 77 - 65 on board: 6+5=11.
In numerology, the number 11 is the destiny of inspiration. 11 is a master number with a strong spiritual vibration. It is a number of high tension and great power.
1. The WTC opened in 1970 after 8 years of construction.
2. The WTC was the dream of David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York.
3. The Rockefellers wanted to name the towers after themselves, but the mayor of NY, John Lindsay, insisted on the World Trade Center.
4. The City chose to build the WTC instead of building a new tunnel and large bridge over the Hudson River.
5. The World Trade Center was designed by architect Minoura Yamasaki.
6. According to Yamasaki, downtown Manhattan was the perfect place to erect the towers because there wasn't "a single building worth saving in the eighborhood."
7. Owners of nearby buildings disagreed, and delayed demolition by three weeks with their protests.
8. Sixteen blocks were cleared to house the completed WTC.
9. More than 10,000 workers involved in building the complex.
10. More than 60 of them died during construction.
11. The excavation work displaced enough soil to create Liberty Park, where four 60-floor towers and four apartment buildings were constructed.
12. The WTC's foundations were laid at 60 feet below ground level.
13. The complex covered 16 acres when finished.
14. In addition to the towers, five other office buildings made up the WTC complex
The WTC had 12 million square feet of space.
15. Each floor was 50,000 square feet.
16. The buildings had their own ZIP codes - 10047 and 10048.
17. The towers were designed to look like a futuristic sculpture.
18. The structure was revolutionary. Its main supports were external, lining the four corners of each tower.
19. Critics condemned the completed buildings as "boring."
20. Completed, the buildings were 100 feet taller then the Empire State building.
21. Until the construction of Chicago's Sears Tower and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, the twin towers were the world's tallest buildings.
22. The North Tower's 347 foot radio tower technically allowed the WTC to still call itself the world's tallest building.
23. The towers were different heights. The South tower was 1,362 feet tall, and big brother North tower was 1,368.
24. Sixty-eight miles of steel were used in the construction of the buildings.
25. The concrete poured was enough to build a road from New York to Washington, DC
26. The steel inside the WTC could have made three more Brooklyn Bridges.
27. The Twin Towers had more than 16 miles of staircases.
28. There were 43,600 windows.
29. The windows were small to reduce the of heat or cold entering the building. Regular size windows would have made the heat unbearable in the summertime.
30. The WTC's 600,000 square feet of glass was cleaned by an automatic machine.
31. The building had 20,000 elevator doors.
32. Of the WTC's 239 banks of elevators, one was known as the fastest in the U.S.
33. The main elevators at 27 feet a second reached the top in less than a minute.
34. There were 828 emergency exit doors.
35. 23,000 fluorescent light bulbs lit the interior.
36. Originally, there were no light switches in the towers, because energy prices were one-third less than they are today. In 1982,switches were installed.
37. 12,000 miles of electrical cable snaked through the building, supplying power to 15 trading floors for stockbrokers.
38. The 75,000 telephones were maintained by 19,600 miles of cable.
39. There were more than 300 computer mainframes on site.
40. The WTC used more power in one day than most small American cities.
41. Steam supplied by a plant on New York's East River was used to heat the buildings.
42. The buildings housed 49,000 tons of air-conditioning equipment.
43. More than 250,000 cans of paint were needed every year for upkeep of the Towers.
44. The surrounding shopping center complex included 3250,000 square feet of restaurants and stores.
45. Six banks, five investment firms and three insurance companies called their headquarters there, in the building.
46. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had its headquarters in the building.
47. American Express had three floors in the WTC.
48. The WTC was home base for Bank of America.
49. The trade center housed two top restaurants - the Windows on the World and Wild Blue.
50. Windows on the World had one of the best vintage wine collections in the United States.
51. More than 50,000 people worked in the twin towers.
52. By 9 a.m. each weekday morning, the buildings had an average of 35,000 employees at their desks.
53. More than 200,000 people - half of them tourists - moved through the buildings each day.
54. The South Tower had an observation deck that was visited by more than 26,000 people a day.
55. An information sign at the top assured visitors that the buildings had been designed to withstand airplane crashes.
56. The towers could be seen from at least 20 miles away.
57. On a clear day, it was possible to see for 45 miles in every direction from the observation deck.
58. The express elevator to the observation deck was the largest in the U.S. with a 55-person capacity.
59. Every president since 1973 paid a visit to the landmark.
60. President Ronald Reagan watched July 4th fireworks celebrations from the WTC on two occasions.
61. Superstars Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Liza Minelli all sang in WTC restaurants.
62. Two New York TV stations incorporated the twin tower image into their logos.
63. The towers served 10 New York TV stations with 10 antennas on the top.
64. More postcards of the WTC were sent each year than any other building in the world.
65. In 1974, a Frenchman, Phillipe Petit, strung a tightrope between the two towers and walked across.
66. Three men successfully parachuted from the top of the towers.
67. More than a dozen mountain climbers have scaled the building.
68. In 1975 a jobless construction worker parachuted from the South Tower to publicize the plight of the unemployed.
69. The most famous man to climb the building was George Willig - who was arrested at the top. Willig was fined one penny for each of the 110 floors he scaled.
70. Last year, a man in a micro-light aircraft crashed into the North Tower.
71. In the concourse beneath the towers, there were more than 75 stores.
72. Each day, over 150,000 commuters passed through the three subway stations there.
73. Eighty-seven tons of food was delivered to the building each day.
74. Over 30,000 cups of coffee were poured daily in the basement cafes.
75. Twenty-two doctors had practices there.
76. Seventeen babies were born on the site.
77. Irv Silverstein recently bought the WTC for almost $3.2 billion.
78. The WTC generated $110 million a year in profit.
79. More than three dozen movies have been filmed there.
80. The best known film to use the WTC as a location was the 1976 remake of King Kong.
81. The 1993 bombing of the WTC killed six people and injured 1,000 more. 1,300 pounds of explosives ripped through the garage in the 1993 attack.
82. That bomb created a crater 16 feet deep and badly damaged inner support beams.
83. Before the 1993 attack, there were three closed circuit television networks for security.
84. After the bombing, the cameras were increased to 300 monitored by computers.
85. More than 300 security guards worked there.
86. The WTC featured security centers on 14 different floors and its own police station.
87. The entrance lobbies had 16 concierge desks and 12 X-ray machines.
88. After the first bombing, no one could get inside the buildings without an ID check.
89. It took an average of five minutes for a visitor to pass through
security checks.
90. Before the 1993 bombing, there were more than 1,000 parking spaces beneath the buildings; 600 remained afterward.
91. All vehicles using the parking lot had to show FBI security passes.
92. On Sept. 11, the building was 95 percent full, with over 400 tenants.
93. New York Gov. George Pataki had an office in the WTC, but wasn't there when the disaster struck.
94. Both the Secret Service and the FBI rented office space there.
95. $110.3 million in gold and 120.7 million in silver is buried in the rubble.
96. The combined weight of the towers was more than 1.5 million tons. 1Each tower was built to safely sway about three feet during strong wind storms.
97. Blue Cross-Blue Shield, New York's largest health insurance company, moved into the building 3 years ago.
98. Nine chapels serving six different faiths called the WTC home.
99. Twenty-nine countries had trade mission offices in the buildings.
100. Every major U.S. airline had ticket offices inside the WTC.
101. It is the first skyscraper in the world destroyed by terrorists
• More than 1.2 million cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated to make way for the World Trade Center. The excavated material was placed in the Hudson River to create 23.5 acres of new land deeded to the City of New York. This landfill area is now Battery Park City.
• More than 200,000 tons of steel — far more than the amount required for the construction of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge — was used in the World Trade Center's construction.
• The 425,000 cubic yards of concrete used in building the World Trade Center is enough to build a five-foot wide sidewalk from New York City to Washington, D.C.
• At peak periods of construction, some 3,500 workers were on the site daily.
• There are 43,600 windows in the Twin Towers with over 600,000 square feet of glass window area cleaned by automatic window washing machines traveling on stainless steel tracks.
• With 60,000 tons of cooling capacity, the World Trade Center's refrigeration plant is the largest in the world.
• The 360-foot television mast atop One World Trade Center supports 10 main television antennas, numerous auxiliary antennas and a master FM antenna. Transmissions from the mast began in June, 1980. Ten television stations in the metropolitan area, including all the major networks, broadcast from the mast. In addition, six stations broadcast high-definition, digital television from the World Trade Center.
• The Tower's skylobby elevator systems separate express from local runs. There are 239 elevators and 71 escalators in the four buildings operated by the Port Authority at the complex. The sky lobby express elevators are capable of carrying 55 people, a 10,000 pound capacity. Express elevators can travel at speeds of up to 27 feet per second.
• Architects: Minoru Yamasaki & Associates; Emery Roth & Sons, P.C.
Plot: 960 x 710 (681,600 sf) shared site for 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 World Trade Center
1 WORLD TRADE CENTER - NORTH TOWER
• Built: 1970
• Height: 110 Floors
• Floor Sizes: (9 - 105) 45,000-50,000 sf
• Elevators: 97 passenger, 6 freight
2 WORLD TRADE CENTER - SOUTH TOWER
• Built: 1972
• Height: 110 Floors
• Floor Sizes (2 - 109) 45,000 - 50,000 sf
• Elevators: 97 passenger, 6 freight
4 WORLD TRADE CENTER - SOUTHEAST PLAZA BUILDING
• Built: 1977
• Height: 9 Floors
• Floor Sizes: (2 - 9) 84,500 sf
• Elevators: 12 passenger, 1 freight
5 WORLD TRADE CENTER - NORTHEAST PLAZA BUILDING
• Built: 1972
• Height: 9 Floors
• Floor Sizes: (2 - 9) 108,400 sf
• Elevators: 9 passenger
World Trade Center Commentary
"Yamasaki's commission to design the World Trade Center with the New York firm of Emery Roth and Sons...house(s) anyone and anything connected world trade. The program presented to Yamasaki, who was selected over a dozen other American architects, was quite explicit: twelve million square feet of floor area on a sixteen acre site, which also had to accommodate new facilities for the Hudson tubes and subway connections—all with a budget of under $500 million. The vast space needs and limited site immediately implied a high-rise development that...make(s) the adjacent drama of Manhattan's business tip seem timid in comparison....
"After studying more than one hundred schemes in model form, Yamasaki decided on a two-tower development to contain the nine million square feet of office space. One tower became unreasonable in size and unwieldy structurally, yet several towers became too approximate for their size and 'looked too much like a housing project'; whereas two towers gave a reasonable office area on each floor, took advantage of the magnificent views, and allowed a manageable structural system. The twin towers, with 110 floors rising 1,353 feet, ... (are) the tallest in the world. From observation decks at the top of the towers it...(is) possible to see 45 miles in every direction....One distinct advantage of the project's enormity is the architectural opportunity to advance the art of building. Yamasaki re-examined the skyscraper from the first principles, considering no ground so hallowed that it could not be questioned, especially in view of the potential of modern technology. The usual economic prohibition on 'custom-made' was out, as virtually anything made for the Center would automatically become a stock item. 'Economy is not in the sparseness of materials that we use,' said Yamasaki of his $350 million estimated cost, 'but in the advancement of technology, which is the real challenge.'
"The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures.
"The other primary obstacle to be overcome in the skyscraper is the elevator system, and Yamasaki has shown himself equally imaginative here. A combination of express and local elevator banks, called a skylobby system, it is particularly efficient because it requires fewer elevator shafts—thus freeing approximately 75 percent of the total floor area for occupancy; had a conventional elevator arrangement been adopted, only approximately 50 percent would have been available. The building has three vertical zones; express elevators serve skylobbies at the forty-first and seventy-fourth floors; from these, and from the plaza level, four banks of local elevators carry passengers to each of the three zones.
"From the outset, Yamasaki believed that there should be an open plaza from which one could appreciate the scale of the towers upon approach. There is little or no sense of scale, for instance, standing at the base of the Empire State Building. Yamasaki's plaza...(is) sheltered from the river winds and contained by five-story buildings which...house shops, exhibition pavilions and a 250-room hotel."
"'The World Trade Center should,' Yamasaki said, 'because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.'
The Creator's Words
"There are a few very influential architects who sincerely believe that all buildings must be 'strong'. The word 'strong' in this context seems to connote 'powerful' — that is, each building should be a monument to the virility of our society. These architects look with derision upon attempts to build a friendly, more gentle kind of building. ... Although it is inevitable for architects who admire [the] great monumental buildings of Europe to strive for the quality most evident in them — grandeur, the elements of mysticism and power, basic to cathedrals and palaces, are also incongruous today, because the buildings we build for our times are for a totally different purpose."
— Minoru Yamasaki. from Paul Heyer, Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America, p186.
"I feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York ... had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace ... beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness."
— Minoru Yamasaki
Building Details
110 stories, 1353 feet (412 meters) tall
(By some sources, Tower One was 1368 feet tall and Tower Two was 1362 feet. Some sources say 1350 feet overall.)
About 10,000,000 square feet of rentable space, occupied by about 50,000 people.
An acre of rentable space on each floor of each tower.
(Gross area of 43200 square feet (4020 square meters) each per floor.)
Owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The world's tallest building for a short time, taking over from the Empire State Building, and then surpassed by the Sears Tower.
The site is 16 acres in lower Manhattan, with buildings grouped around a five acre central plaza. The site is bounded by Vesey Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street on the west, about three blocks north of the New York Stock Exchange.
Observation deck, South Tower, WTC 2, floor 107 (summer hours 9:30am to 11:30pm).
Skylobbies on floors 44 and 78 served by high speed elevators.
Seven underground levels including services, shopping, and a subway station.
The two nine story Plaza Buildings, with roughly ell-shaped plans, flank the main entrance to the complex from Church Street, with WTC 4 on the south and WTC 5 on the north.
Groundbreaking for construction was on August 5th, 1966. Steel construction began in August 1968. First tenant occupancy of One WTC was December, 1970, and occupancy of Two WTC began in January 1972. Ribbon cutting was on April 4, 1973.
On Friday, February 26, 1993, a massive terrorist bomb was exploded in the Center's public parking garage, but the Towers survived.
World Trade Center Disaster — Tuesday, September 11, 2001
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at 8:45am New York local time, One World Trade Center, the north tower, was hit by a hijacked 767 commercial jet airplane, loaded with fuel for a trans-continental flight. Two World Trade Center, the south tower, was hit by a similar hijacked jet 18 minutes later at 9:03am. (In separate but related attacks, the Pentagon building near Washington D.C. was hit by a hijacked 757 at 9:43am, and at 10:10am, a fourth hijacked jetliner crashed in Pennsylvania.) The south tower, WTC 2, which had been hit second, was the first to suffer a complete structural collapse at 10:05am, 62 minutes after being hit itself, 80 minutes after the first impact. The north tower, WTC 1, then also collapsed at 10:29am, 104 minutes after being hit. WTC 7, a substantial 47 story office building in its own right, built in 1987, was damaged by the collapsing towers, caught fire, and later in the afternoon also totally collapsed.
Photo sequence, collapse of the north tower at ArchitectureWeek
The list of collapsed buildings (as confirmed by the New York Times through Saturday, 2001.0915) included all seven buildings of the World Trade center complex — including WTC 6, the U.S Customs House to the north; WTC 3, the 22 story Marriot World Trade Center hotel just west of Tower Two; and WTC 4 and 5, the Plaza Buildings to the east (although satellite images suggest much of WTC 5, the north Plaza Building, was still standing). Other nearby buildings were significantly damaged, including the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and One Liberty Plaza, a 54 floor, 743' tall building across Church Street to the east.
About 2800 people died in the disaster. At the time the recovery and site clearing process officially concluded on May 30, 2002, 1796 people remained unrecovered. 1.8 million tons of debris was removed from the disaster site.
Fast Facts:
One World Trade Center featured Windows on the World, an elegant restaurant with a magnificent view of New York City. Two World Trade Center featured two observation decks, both more than 1,300 feet above the city.
Each tower had 104 passenger elevators, 21,800 windows, and roughly an acre of rentable space on each floor.
From the observation deck on Two World Trade Center it was possible to see 45 miles in every direction.
Each tower swayed approximately three feet from true center in strong wind storms.
If all the glass used in the construction of both towers were melted into a ribbon of glass, 20 inches wide, it would run 65 miles long.
The twin towers were often called "Lego-blocks" by critics.
On Friday, February 26, 1993, at 12:18 p.m., a bomb exploded in the underground garage of One World Trade Center, creating a 22-foot-wide, five-story-deep crater. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The towers were cleaned, repaired, and reopened in less than one month.
World Trade Center Destroyed
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the world was shocked by horrific attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and by the related attack on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. ArchitectureWeek joins the world in profound sympathy for the victims and their families.
At this writing, the death toll is unknown but will certainly be appallingly high. Over forty thousand people worked in the New York towers, and several thousand probably did not survive the impact, the explosions, the fires, and the subsequent total structural collapses.
ArchitectureWeek will follow the story over the next weeks, months, perhaps years, as the facts of the buildings' architectural and structural vulnerability become more clear. In the meantime, let this be, among many other things, a sober reminder of the importance and fragility of our built infrastructure.
ArchitectureWeek contributing editor Michael J. Crosbie was on a train heading into New York at the time of the attacks. Safe but shaken, he writes:
"The images of buildings burning, exploding, and disappearing replay before my eyes over and over again. Suddenly, within minutes, landmarks on a city skyline vanish. The human carnage is impossible to fathom, sickening to contemplate.
The skyscraper targets in New York City were prominent symbols of our civilization, buildings of American invention that all over the world expressed the spirit of a will to soar above the earth in creations of steel, concrete, and glass. The terrorists chose very carefully. They discerned those skyscrapers as the cathedrals of our age and aimed at their heart."
As we each try to cope with the shock, the disbelief, and the grief, and as emergency response teams move quickly in the massive rescue and recovery effort, let us together move more cautiously to presume guilt and seek vengeance. Only fairness and decency can speak truth to criminal violence.
In this time for standing resolute and courageous as civilized people, fair justice, in due course, on the foundation of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, shall stand also as a cornerstone of our democracy.
Vital Statistics:
Location: New York, New York, USA
Completion Date: 1972 (Tower One), 1973 (Tower Two)
Cost: $400 million
Height: 1,368 feet (Tower One), 1,362 feet (Tower Two)
Stories: 110
Materials: Steel
Facing Materials: Aluminum, steel
Engineer(s): Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson
Constructed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the early 1970s, the World Trade Center towers were, for their time, the best known examples of tube buildings. Tube buildings are strengthened by closely spaced columns and beams in the outer walls. The closely spaced columns and beams in each tower form a steel tube that, together with an internal core, withstand the tremendous wind loads that affect buildings this tall.
Aside from withstanding enormous wind loads, the World Trade Center towers were also constructed to withstand settlement loads. Because the towers were built on six acres of landfill, the foundation of each tower had to extend more than 70 feet below ground level to rest on solid bedrock.
The two towers were unable to survive the effects of a direct hit by two hijacked commercial jetliners during terrorist attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001. Although they were in fact designed to withstand being struck by an airplane, the resultant fires weakened the infrastructure of the building, collapsing the upper floors and creating too much load for the lower floors to bear. Shortly after the attack, both towers collapsed.
You can explore a comprehensive site on why the Twin Towers fell, including interviews with an engineer, a survivor, an interactive explanation of how metal behaves when heated, and much more, at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/.
At the time of their completion in 1973, the World Trade Center towers were the two tallest buildings in the world. Two years later, the Sears Tower in Chicago seized the coveted title
