THE WORLD TRADE CENTER AKA THE TWIN TOWERS
HAD A LIFE CUT SHORT WHEN 2 AIR LINER JETS CRASHED IN TO BOTH TOWERS ON 9-11
THIS SITES MAIN PURPOUSE IS TO INFORM THOSE OF THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
THIS SITE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE LOST AND KILLED IN THE 9-11 ATTICKS AND TO THOSE WHO GAVE THERE LIVES TO SAVE THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Height: 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 meters)
Owners: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Architect: Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth and Sons consulting
Engineer: John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson
Ground Breaking: August 5, 1966
Opened: 1970-73; April 4, 1973 ribbon cutting
Destroyed: South Tower 10:05 a.m. September 11 2001 (Terrorist Atticks) North Tower 10:28 a.m. September 11 2001 (Terrorist Atticks)
The World Trade Center is more than its signature twin towers: it is a complex of seven buildings on 16-acres, constructed and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). The towers, One and Two World Trade Center, rise at the heart of the complex, each climbing more than 100 feet higher than the silver mast of the Empire State Building.
Construction of a world trade facility had been under consideration since the end of WWII. In the late 1950s the Port Authority took interest in the project and in 1962 fixed its site on the west side of Lower Manhattan on a superblock bounded by Vesey, Liberty, Church and West Streets. Architect Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the project; architects Emery Roth & Sons handled production work, and, at the request of Yamasaki, the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson served as engineers.
The Port Authority envisioned a project with a total of 10 million square feet of office space. To achieve this, Yamasaki considered more than a hundred different building configurations before settling on the concept of twin towers and three lower-rise structures. Designed to be very tall to maximize the area of the plaza, the towers were initially to rise to only 80-90 stories. Only later was it decided to construct them as the world's tallest buildings, following a suggestion said to have originated with the Port Authority's public relations staff.
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towersí design and structure is clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.
Also unique to the engineering design were its core and elevator system. The twin towers were the first supertall buildings designed without any masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure created by the buildingsí high speed elevators might buckle conventional shafts, engineers designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core. For the elevators, to serve 110 stories with a traditional configuration would have required half the area of the lower stories be used for shaftways. Otis Elevators developed an express and local system, whereby passengers would change at "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of shaftways.
Construction began in 1966 and cost an estimated $1.5 billion. One World Trade Center was ready for its first tenants in late 1970, though the upper stories were not completed until 1972; Two World Trade Center was finished in 1973. Excavation to bedrock 70 feet below produced the material for the Battery Park City landfill project in the Hudson River. When complete, the Center met with mixed reviews, but at 1,368 and 1,362 feet and 110 stories each, the twin towers were the world's tallest, and largest, buildings
until the Sears Tower surpassed them both in 1974.
After they were built, the towers were nicknamed "David" and "Nelson."
The towers were dedicated in 1973. They were the world's tallest buildings for only a short time, since the Sears Tower in Chicago was dedicated a month later. However, the north tower sported a 360-foot television mast that allowed it to technically remain the world's tallest building. A hotel, a shopping plaza, and three smaller buildings nearby completed the complex.
The twin towers became the most popular postcard image in the world. Some three dozen movies were made at the towers, including the 1976 remake of King Kong.
The world trade center had housands of Visitors.
The buildings weighed more than 1.5 million tons and contained 198 miles of heating ducts and 23,000 fluorescent light bulbs. Each of the towers had 110 floors, and each floor was roughly 50,000 square feet large. Shopping malls with restaurants, stores, and barbershops dotted the concourses. The mall underneath the towers contained another 75 stores. The six basements also included two New York subway stations and the PATH trains to New Jersey used by 150,000 people daily.
Some 50,000 people worked in the buildings, while another 200,000 visited or passed through each day. The top floor observation deck had 26,000 visitors daily, who could see for 45 miles on a clear day. From the ground, the towers were visible for at least 20 miles.
The 43,600 windows were washed automatically, while the air conditioning system was the world's largest, with 60,000 tons of cooling capacity. It took 250,000 cans of paint each year to spruce up the towers.
Each tower had 97 elevators for passengers and six for freight. Express elevators zoomed skyward at 27 feet per second, reaching the top in 4.8 minutes. More than 300 computer main frames in the towers served the towers' occupants.
now that the world trade centers are gone the memory (of the pepole,twin towers and 9-11) will live on in the minds of millions of americans
specs
note: I don't take credit for the pics on this site other then those with my name on them this is my tribute to the twin towers and the pepole who risked there lives to save the lives of others
WWII 1945 - 9-11 2001
A skyline forever Changed
With Great Thanks To Maureen Conway For Suppling Her Personal Pictures To The Making Of This Site.
links
FDNY
NYPD
PORT AUTHORITY POLICE
Unrelated links
my billy joel fan site
