All the twin towers of the World Trade Center They were inaugurated in 1973 and succumbed in the famous terrorist attack of 2011. During all those years they were an icon of the world. skyline de New York and all the tourists wanted to be in their observatories enjoying the incredible panoramic views that they offered.
The World Trade Center, such as the translation into Spanish, was in manhattan and when it was finished it had the tallest buildings in the world. The mega-constructions of Dubai were still many years away. What do you think if we remember those towering towers that looked up to the sky?
World Trade Center
El complejo, other buildings were part of the same and were built until 1985, it was designed by two architectural firms. The foundation stone was laid in 1966 and as we said before, the towers were inaugurated in 1973. The north tower was completed first and then the south tower.
The design was largely done by a Japanese-American architect named Minoru Yamasaki, known for being a representative of the neo-formalism and romantic modernism within the field of architecture.
Although he originally thought of 80 floors, in the end it was 101, which in the field of design means the use of more elevators. That's right, the taller the building, the more elevators you need to incorporate.
The World Trade Center thus ended with 95 elevators per tower. They occupied the center of them and were complemented by three staircases. Here in the center there were also steel columns running from the base to the top of each building. Surely you have heard of them in the documentaries that were made as a result of the terrorist attack ...
Anyway, once the design was completed and adapted to New York City regulations, the workers went to work and demolished thirteen blocks to clear the area. In addition, almost a million cubic meters of earth were excavated. The works were quite a show! Finally, the North Tower or WTC 1 was finished in 1970 and the following year Tower 2. People started working on the buildings between 1970 and 1972 but everything was 100% finished in 1973.
From then on, new buildings were added to the commercial complex and thus by the '80s they were seven constructions, among which the two towers stand out. Both they were 410 meters tall. For two years, from '72 to '74, Tower 1 was the tallest building in the world beating the Empire State that had held the crown for four decades. The following year Tower 2 followed.
That same year, however, another American skyscraper took their place at 440 meters high: the Willis Tower, in Chicago, although they continued to be the buildings with more number of floors until 2010, when the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai.
Although the World Trade Center was born with the idea of housing offices of companies dedicated to trade, it only succeeded in the 80s, because at the beginning the economic situation was not ideal (remember that in '73 it was the so-called Oil Crisis) , so between the '80s and' 90s it was that financial companies began to take over the towers.
Tourism at the World Trade Center
Obviously the designers also thought about the tourist exploitation of such towers. That is why they built observatories and the Hollywood cinema was in charge of promoting them in their films.
The South Tower consisted of two observation areas, one interior and one exterior. It was the WTC Observatories center, located on floors 107 and 110. The indoor observatory was 400 meters high, on the 107th floor, and had a food court that resembled a NY subway car.
If the weather was nice, visitors could walk a bit down two short flights of stairs from this point to the 110th floor, twenty meters higher.
Without clouds, the panoramic view reached 80 kilometers. A marvel! In addition, there was only one fence, so that nothing impeded the view, which added points if we compared this observatory with another classic in the city, that of the Empire State Building.
For its part, the North Tower had since 1976 a restaurant that operated on two floors, 106 and 107, a cafeteria and a wine bar that years later would be replaced but that had millionaire profits until the terrorist attack of 2001. Also On the 44th floor, there was another restaurant that served lunch.
Some extra data by way of curiosities: the North Tower caught fire in 1975, on several floors. Also suffered an attack in 1993 when a truck with explosives exploded in his parking lot, causing a huge hole in five sublevels and the death of five people. The attack was carried out by a Kuwait-born Arab named Ramzi Yousef, from Al Qaeda.
Finally, the life of the Word Trade Center came to an end on September 11, 2001 when Islamic terrorists hijacked two planes, one from American Airlines and one from United Airlines, and crashed them into the towers.
The American flight crashed into the North Tower, between floors 93 and 99, and less than twenty minutes later the United flight crashed between floors 77 and 85 of the South Tower.
The first impact left some 1300 people isolated as the stairs and elevators were destroyed. The second was less serious because a staircase was left whole, but since a short time later the tower collapsed there could not be many evacuees. A) Yes, first the South Tower collapsed and a little less than half an hour later and after burning in flames for an hour and a half the North Tower collapsed.
Then some other buildings in the World Trade Center complex suffered the same fate. The collapse of the towers did its thing with the Marriot Hotel, the WTC3, the WTC 7 also collapsed due to structural failure and the rest were badly damaged by the flames so in the end they were collapsed.
The World Trade Center today
Shortly after the terrorist attack, a competition was opened to build a new financial and commercial center. In 2006 work began on the new complex: One World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, 7 World Trade Center, 3 World Trade Center and 2 WTC, both skyscrapers. The complex has, of course, a memorial and a museum.
El One World Trade Center it is even taller than its predecessor: 541 meters. Construction was completed in 2012. The museum, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, opened in 2014 and the memorial in 2011. The hub Transportation is most recent, 2016. Some work on other buildings in the complex continues.
Today tourists can approach the complex and visit the One World Trade Center observatory, on three of its highest floors, 100, 101 and 102. It offers great views in 360º, it has five Sky Pod type elevatorsSuper fast, they climb from the base to the 201st floor in just 60 seconds with a phenomenal LED light set that recreates the visual history of NY from the 1500s to the present day.
In the observatory you can also enjoy a two-minute screening with aerial views of New York, A multimedia panel that allows you to know your neighborhoods and tourist attractions and the beautiful Sky Portal, the five meter high round platform with real-time HD images of the streets below.
Tickets can be booked online and there are different modalities: no waiting, with priority entry, with priority entry + consumption.
- Skip-the-line admission: $ 37 per adult
- Priority entry: $ 48 per adult
- Priority ticket + consumption: $ 59.