The original World Trade Center was a large complex of seven buildings in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. It opened on April 4th, 1973. At the time of their completion, the Twin Towers—the original 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower) at 1,368 feet (417 m); and 2 World Trade Center (the South Tower) at 1,362 feet (415.1 m)—were the tallest man made structures in the world. Other buildings in the complex included the Marriott World Trade Center (3 WTC), 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. The complex contained 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m2) of office space.
The core complex was built between 1966 and 1975, at a cost of $400 million (equivalent to $2.27 billion in 2021. The idea was suggested by David Rockefeller to help stimulate urban renewal in Lower Manhattan, and his brother Nelson signed the legislation to build it. The buildings at the complex were designed by Minoru Yamasaki. In 1998, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to privatize it by leasing the buildings to a private company to manage. It awarded the lease to Silverstein Properties in July of 2001. During its existence, the World Trade Center symbolized globalization and the economic power of America. Although its design was initially criticised by New York citizens and professional critics, the Twin Towers became an icon of New York City.
April 4, 1973: The World Trade Center was dedicated as the world’s tallest complex.
David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller at the Museum of Modern Art's 41st Annual Party in the Garden in 2009. Courtesy of David X. Prutting, © Patrick McMullan.
Banking giant, philanthropist and art collector and patron David Rockefeller, the patriarch and oldest living member of the Rockefeller clan, died at age 101 on March 20 at his home in Pacantico Hills, New York. A family spokesperson confirmed his death, the result of congestive heart failure.
A longtime supporter and former chairman of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, helped found, Rockefeller was the chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan bank. His decision to move the company to Wall Street helped pave the way for the World Trade Center, a project of which he was a major supporter. In 2015, Forbes estimated Rockefeller’s personal fortune at $3 billion. His grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, made the family fortune through his Standard Oil Company, becoming the country’s first billionaire. In some ways, David Rockefeller represents the end of the family as an American dynasty, as none of the younger members of the clan have matched the national and international prominence of the man who met with an estimated 200 heads of state over his lifetime.
According to the New York Times, Rockefeller had an extensive art collection of about 15,000 works, including paintings as well as decorative arts objects such as porcelain and furniture. As reported by NBC, it was once valued at $500 million. Under the mentorship of MoMA founding director Alfred Barr, Rockefeller began collecting with a Pierre Bonnard flower painting, a Henri Matisse still life, and the Pierre Auguste Renoir nude Gabrielle at the Mirror. He also bought a set of water lily paintings by Claude Monet in 1956.
PHOTOGRAPHER: THE NEW YORK TIMES
David Rockefeller speaks at a news conference about the rebuilding of an area from Canal Street to Battery Park.
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The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, 19th & 20th Century Art Evening Sale..
(1840-1916) Fleurs signed 'ODILON REDON' (lower right) oil on canvas 24 1/8 x 18 ½ in. (61.3 x 46.9 cm.) Provenance Georges Bernheim, Paris. M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York (acquired from the above, 10 March 1930). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., New York (acquired from the above, 5 January 1938). Estate of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, New York. Acquired from the above by the late owners, February 1958. Estimate price 1.000.000 $ - 1.500.000 $
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, some people believed that David Rockefeller secretly ran the world. Indeed, if you were a conspiracy theorist of a leftwing bent, the case was all but irresistible. He was after all chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, then at its zenith. He was founder and chairman of the Trilateral Commission, bringing together the political and financial elites of the US, Japan and Europe. Most important, he was a Rockefeller. David Rockefeller Jr grew up on West 54th Street, in what was then the largest private home in New York, boasting nine floors with its own squash court and infirmary. Weekends were spent at the family’s 3,500-acre estate north of the city where John D Sr played card games and golf with David, his favourite grandchild. The siblings did ordinary American things, but with a distinct Rockefeller twist. They would roller-skate up Fifth Avenue to school – but with a limousine slowly following them, to collect them if they tired. Each Thanksgiving, the young David would deliver food parcels to the poor – but a liveried chauffeur was beside him to help carry them. Every summer the family took a train to Maine. The train however consisted of private Pullman cars, with extra carriages to carry the family horses.
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(1853-1890) Planteuse de betteraves signed, titled and dated ‘Vincent planteuse de betteraves - Juin -’ (lower left) black chalk on paper 18 1/8 x 20 ¾ in. (46.2 x 52.8 cm.) Drawn in Nuenen, June 1885 Provenance Hidde Nijland, The Hague (before 1904). Artist - Vincent Van Gogh
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(1841-1919) Gabrielle au miroir signed ‘Renoir.’ (lower left) oil on canvas 31 7/8 x 25 ½ in. (81.1 x 64.7 cm.) Painted circa 1910 Provenance Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist, 1910). Bignou Gallery, Inc., New York (acquired from the family of the above, 25 September 1947). Sam Salz, Inc., New York. Acquired from the above by the late owners, February 1951.
After a battle among various bidders that stretched on for more than 10 minutes, Claude Monet’s Nymphéas en fleur (1914–17) sold tonight for $84.7 million, a new record for the Impressionist, at Christie’s evening sale of works from the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller in New York. May 8, 2018
Vincent Van Gogh in his early years..
Paul Cézanne - Still Life With Fruit Dish, 1879-80, Rockefeller Collection
David Rockefeller
Less gregarious than Nelson, fascinated by travel and an avid collector of insects, David was a rather solitary, but happy child. A love of art was in his blood. In 1929, when he was 14, his parents founded New York’s Museum of Modern Art. David was associated with the museum for six decades, and in 2005 he pledged $100m (£80.9m) to MoMA, its largest-ever single donation. Gauguins and Picassos adorned the walls of his office on the 56th floor of the Rockefeller Centre. But by Rockefeller standards he got his hands dirty. Not only was he the first of the clan to write an autobiography; he was also the first since his grandfather to earn a company salary – from Chase, the family bank which David entered in 1946 after service in the Second World War and would lead for two decades, from 1961 to 1981.
The philanthropist meets President Ronald Reagan at the State Department in 1984
AP
Rockefeller said that Nelson Mandela, whom he met in September 1998, was the man he admired most
Getty
As a commercial banker, he might have been outperformed by Walter Wriston, who turned Chase’s great rival, Citibank, into America’s largest and most innovative financial institution. But as a pillar of the US establishment, no-one came close. Not only did David Rockefeller have access to anyone on earth who mattered; he seemed to know them all personally as well. His Rolodex, an immense store of reputedly some 100,000 names that he kept in a special room next to his office, became legend. Not only did he run the bank. For decades he was the pre-eminent spokesman for US business. He was a long-serving chairman of the venerable Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1973 co-founded the Trilateral Commission, grouping the great and good of the Western world. Both Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter unavailingly offered him the job of Secretary of the Treasury, and Carter also approached him to become chairman of the Federal Reserve. Small wonder the conspiracy theories – fanned, it must be said, by Rockefeller’s readiness to hobnob not just with presidents, prime ministers and princes, but dictators as well.
Had he been a member of the House of Commons though, David Rockefeller would have made a perfect knight of the shires. There was another touch of well-heeled English eccentricity about him too. In a parallel existence as an entomologist, Rockefeller amassed a collection of beetles even more voluminous than his Rolodex, containing 150,000 specimens and, representing about 2,000 species (two of which are named after him).
Just before his death, David’s net wealth was estimated at $3.3bn (£2.6bn), yet David to the end described himself as a “Rockefeller Republican,” a social moderate with a sense of “noblesse oblige”, who believed that the rich had a duty to help the less well off (a philosophy, like ‘one nation’ Toryism in Britain, that has virtually disappeared in today’s Republican party.)
Environmental Protection Agency. (12/02/1970 - )
Title
VIEW ACROSS THE HUDSON RIVER TO LOWER MANHATTAN. TWIN TOWERS OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE DOMINATE THE RIVER
Site
The western portion of the World Trade Center site was originally under the Hudson River. The shoreline was in the vicinity of Greenwich Street, which is closer to the site's eastern border. It was on this shoreline, close to the intersection of Greenwich and the former Dey Street, that Dutch explorer Adriaen Block's ship, Tyger, burned to the waterline in November 1613, stranding him and his crew and forcing them to overwinter on the island. They built the first European settlement in Manhattan. The remains of the ship were buried under landfil when the shoreline was extended beginning in 1797 and was discovered during excavation work in 1916. The remains of a second eighteenth-century ship were discovered in 2010 during excavation work at the site. The ship, believed to be a Hudson River sloop, was found just south of where the Twin Towers stood, about 20 feet (6.1 m) below the surface.
415 Greenwich Street was first built in 1913 and is 109 years old. There are a total of 10 floors in 415 Greenwich Street, but good news, residents have access to 2 elevators.
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Dey Street between West and Washington Streets, Manhattan.
English: Digital ID: 482550. Abbott, Berenice -- Photographer. April 08, 1936
Notes: Code: II.A.2.c. Express companies, ships' outfitters and a contractor fill 4 and 5 story buildings along Dey St., tall towers beyond in upper right.
Adriaen Block
The Bronck Museum welcomes the replica Dutch vessel "Onrust" from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, at Coxsackie Landing at Riverside Park. One of Adriaen Block's ships..
Adriaen Block Facts: Early Years
Adriaen Block was born in Amsterdam somewhere around 1567. There is not much known about his childhood and by 1603 he married Neeltje Hendricks van Gelder. The two of them had five children together and in 1606 they moved to a house located on Oude Waal street. The two of them would spend the rest of their lives at this location. While not much is known about Block’s childhood it is certain that he was active in the shipping trade in the 1590s. He was transporting wood from northern Europe to Spain. This was an excellent job and during this time he was able to learn about navigation, sailing, and politics. In the spring of 1604, Block failed to deliver goods to Cyprus but intercepted a ship heading to Brazil. He captured the ship and its goods and took it to Amsterdam. This is the event that would change his life and social standing. He made a large amount of money from this capture and would gain the reputation as an excellent privateer and this led to him purchasing the house on Oude Waal Street.
A press release issued by the Museum provided the following information: “In 1614 the Dutch explorer and his crew investigated coastal New York, Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in pursuit of developing trade partnerships with Native Americans. Block became the first known European to travel up the Connecticut River to just north of Hartford (a distance of approximately 60 miles from Long Island Sound). The re-created Onrust was launched in 2009 by The Onrust Project, an all-volunteer non-profit out of New York, which built the vessel after painstakingly researching traditional Dutch shipbuilding techniques. For the first time, the Museum and the Project have partnered to bring the vessel to Connecticut. The Onrust will be a floating exhibit at the Museum through early October.”
In 2010, excavators in New York's Lower Manhattan discovered buried deep in the ground the remains of a wooden ship and—according to a new study—that ship was built using timber that had been harvested from old-growth forests in southeastern Pennsylvania around 1773. Two decades later, in the 1790s, it was deemed junk and the ship's remains were used as landfill to extend the banks of the Hudson River and create more land in the burgeoning city of New York.
Radio Row
Cortlandt Street, New York's Radio Row, with shops selling all sorts of radio equipment circa 1930's. (Photo by Keystone View/FPG/Getty Images)
Cortlandt Street in 1908 before it was renamed Radio Row..
Later, the area became New York City's Radio Row, which existed from 1921 to 1966. The neighborhood was a warehouse district in what is now Tribeca and the Financial District. Harry Schneck opened City Radio on Cortlandt Street in 1921, and eventually, the area held several blocks of electronics stores, with Cortlandt Street as its central axis. The used radios, war surplus electronics (e.g., AN/ARC-5 radios), junk, and parts were often piled so high they would spill out onto the street, attracting collectors and scroungers. According to a business writer, it also was the origin of the electronic component distribution business.
On September 20th, 1962, the Port Authority announced the selection of Minoru Yamasaki as lead architect and Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. Yamasaki devised the plan to incorporate twin towers. His original plan called for the towers to be 80 stories tall, but to meet the Port Authority's requirement for 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2) of office space, the buildings would each have to be 110 stories tall.
Minoru Yamasaki
In 1945, Yamasaki accepted an offer to become design chief at the firm of Smith, Hinchman and Grylls in Detroit, anticipating opportunities that the growing city had in store for him. Needing a pleasant living environment for himself and his family, Yamasaki looked for a house in Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, or Grosse Pointe—neighborhoods whose residents were predominantly upper-class white families—where he had designed some homes. However, the local real estate association's discrimination against non-whites prevented him from owning property in any of those neighborhoods. Consequently, Yamasaki settled in a 125-year-old farmhouse in Troy, which he completely modernized. The bitter feeling induced by this incident reinforced his firm belief that America should ensure democracy, equality, and freedom for all, principles the country claimed to stand for.
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Image Above - Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis
The first commission that he received after starting his independent practice in the Midwest was the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis, which was completed in 1955. His original plan was to build a community with space for greens and recreational purposes. However, the Public Housing Authority's cost-saving measures forced the architect to increase the density of the complex and eliminate the garden units. The project that prioritized economy and function over security and serenity caused residents' lives to be degraded. Faced with criticism that blamed the architecture of the housing complex for ruining the well-being of the tenants, Yamasaki was determined that he would never again compromise his convictions, vowing to create beautiful buildings and peaceful environments for the people. The complex was called a high-rise slum by city officials and demolished after the seventeen years of its existence.
The site where Ryoanji Temple sits today dates back to the 11th century when it served as an estate of the Fujiwara Clan. The temple itself was established in 1450 by a powerful deputy named Hosokawa Katsumoto. The original temple was destroyed in a fire just two decades later, but it was rebuilt in 1488 by Hosokawa Matsumoto, Katsumoto’s son. Sources conflict about when the temple garden was built. Some suggest a construction date near the end of the 15th century and others a date during the 16th century or even the 17th century. Another fire in 1797 destroyed the temple and the garden, and so both were rebuilt together at the end of the 18th century.
Ryōanji (Peaceful Dragon Temple) The Ryōanji garden is the one of the most famous examples of a rock garden—a form which developed during the Muromachi period (1392-1573) with the efflorescence of Zen Buddhism in medieval Japan. This type of garden consists of rocks and pebbles rather than vegetation and water, and was mainly created on the grounds of temples for encouraging contemplation. White gravel often symbolizes flowing elements such as waterfalls, rivers, creeks, or sea, while rocks suggest islands, shores, or bridges.
Ryoanji: Kyoto’s Best Zen Rock Garden Temple
Places to Go: Ryoan-ji Temple
Ryōanji thrived as a great Zen center for the cultural activities of the elite from the late 16th through the first half of the 17th century under the patronage of the Hosokawa family. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto. In the late 1990, the garden attracted over a million visitors annually and is regarded as an expression of Zen art and a symbol of Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture.
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While he had had a complex about being Japanese American in the white-dominated architectural field, a trip to his ancestral country changed him. In the 1950s, the U.S. government sent architects abroad as part of a program of cultural diplomacy through which the state desired to export the American way of life, and Yamasaki was sent to Japan to design the U.S. General Consulate building in Kobe. During his visit, he was enchanted by the Katsura Palace, the Old Imperial Palace, and the stone garden of Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, which gave him confidence in his cultural heritage and ideas for the project at hand. The Consulate building, complete with shoji -style screens and a garden pond with a wooden deck, modeled after Katsura, received high reviews. In 1955, architectural magazines commented that the compound represented an acknowledgement of American appreciation for indigenous culture by making sure that the building would fit into local surroundings and customs. At the same time, the use of reinforced concrete, glass, and fiberglass presented an example of contemporary American architecture for the former enemy nation, which had been turned into a Cold War junior ally.
Born in Seattle, Washington to Japanese immigrant parents, Yamasaki enrolled in the University of Washington’s architecture program in 1929. Working in a salmon cannery to pay his tuition, he graduated with a Bachelor's in Architecture in 1934. After completing a master’s degree at New York University, Yamasaki went to work for the firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, designers of the Empire State Building. In 1945, Yamasaki took a job with the Detroit, Michigan firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (now SmithGroup JJR), where he worked until starting his own firm in 1949.
Subsequent commissions included several airports and a wide range of office buildings, which eventually led to Yamasaki’s selection to design the World Trade Center in 1962. Yamasaki attempted to incorporate beautiful elements—such as arches and arcades—into his design of the World Trade Center to avoid boredom while recognizing the importance of simplicity. By using economical and light materials that the latest technologies made available for skyscrapers, he believed that the project could embody both beauty and technological progress that he thought were representative of industrial American society. In order to make the World Trade Center seem more accessible and open to everyone, he placed a spacious central plaza between the two towers where Manhattanites could sit and relax. Yamasaki hoped to enhance world peace through world trade by projecting man's belief in humanity and reflect the serenity, hope, and joy that he believed were integral parts of American democracy.
Yamasaki received the largest amount of media attention when the United States needed to emphasize cultural pluralism in its ideological war against the Soviet Union. His image as a successful Japanese American was a convenient tool for the state as well as for believers of the American way of life in countering the Communists' charge that the United States oppressed racial minorities. Yamasaki's stature grew especially when his design of the Federal Science Pavilion of the 1961 Seattle World's Fair received positive reactions from a wide range of audiences. Recognizing the achievement, the Japanese American Citizens League bestowed its Nisei of the Biennium Award on him in 1962. Yamasaki appeared on the cover of Time magazine in January 1963, soon after his selection as the designer of the World Trade Center. He received the Horatio Alger Award in 1964, which indicated the selection committee's belief that his life story of rising from a slum to become a world-renowned architect epitomized the American dream that was supposed to be accessible to everyone, regardless of race and class, if they put forth enough effort. While he believed that "race has little to do with opportunity in America" in terms of Japanese Americans, he frequently voiced his serious concerns about racial discrimination against African Americans, since, as an architect practicing in the Detroit area, he saw the injustice firsthand
The Twin Towers soar over lower Manhattan and New York's concrete jungle..April 1977 -- Bill Pierce/Getty Images
During most of his career, Yamasaki emphasized the visual effects of architecture over structural matters, which occasionally caused controversy and prompted some architects such as I. M. Pei to criticize his work as "artistic caprice." Against this charge, Kenzo Tange argued that Yamasaki's "strongest characteristic is his persistent habit of treating his structures themselves as design motifs." True to his beliefs, Yamasaki vigorously worked until the end of his life, creating delightful buildings with unique details. Yamasaki's major commissions in his career that spanned almost half a century include the Saint Louis Airport Terminal, Missouri (1956); the McGregor Memorial Community Conference Center of Wayne State University, Michigan (1958); the Dhahran Air Terminal, Saudi Arabia (1961); the Consolidated Gas Company, Michigan (1963); and the Century Plaza Hotel and Towers, California (1966 and 1975). The Founder's Hall of Shinji Shumeikai, Japan (1982), which was modeled after Mt. Fuji, became his last tour de force. He passed away in 1986.
Century Plaza Hotel and Towers, California
Century Plaza Hotel and Towers, California
Stuart Axe -
World Trade Center South Tower Observation Deck
A view from the south tower observation deck some 1362 feet above street level.
I took this photograph on my trip to New York City in May 1996 and It's one of my most treasured possessions. After the events here on September 11th 2001, I look back on my visit to the center as one of the most humbling experiences of my life.
The World Trade Center complex housed more than 430 companies that were engaged in various commercial activities. On a typical weekday, an estimated 50,000 people worked in the complex and another 140,000 passed through as visitors. The complex hosted 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m2) of office space, and was so large that it had its own zip code: 10048. The towers offered expansive views from the observation deck atop the South Tower and the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the North Tower. The Twin Towers became known worldwide, appearing in numerous movies and television shows as well as on postcards and other merchandise. It became a New York icon, in the same league as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Statue of Liberty. The World Trade Center was compared to Rockefeller Center, which David Rockefeller's brother Nelson Rockefeller had developed in midtown Manhattan.
Views of the North Tower from the Top of the World observation deck (The South Tower)
The Windows on the World dining room, on the 107th floor of the North Tower. Photo: Ezra Stoller/Esto
Windows on the World, the restaurant on the North Tower's 106th and 107th floors, opened in April 1976. It was developed by restaurateur Joe Baum at a meagre cost of more than $17 million. Small change to some but it was being invested into one of the highest restaurant in the world.. As well as the main restaurant, two offshoots were located at the top of the North Tower: Hors d'Oeuvrerie (offered a peasant food menu called Danish smorgasbord during the day and sushi in the evening) and Cellar in the Sky (a small wine bar). Windows on the World also had a wine school program run by Kevin Zraly, who published a book on the course.
As you rode up in the elevator, your ears popped, and the journey took an eerily long time. Strangers would look at one another, a little frightened, as the big box ascended. When the doors finally opened, they’d spill into the restaurant, giddy with relief. Safe!
How long did it take? A minute, maybe longer, but in that time you left Manhattan, and every familiar thing, behind. Windows on the World was the ultimate destination restaurant, and Joe Baum, the consummate host, played it for all it was worth.
You walked from darkness into light, toward floor-to-ceiling windows beckoning from the end of the corridor. When you reached them, it was almost impossible to resist the urge to press yourself against the glass and look down at the microscopic people on the sidewalk below. From up here it was a toy village, cars nosing silently down crowded streets while, off in the distance, planes took off and landed at distant airports. The restaurant’s name was not lightly chosen.
As the mâitre d’ led you across the vast expanse of restaurant, the city winked up from all sides. Then the fireworks began. James Beard himself helped create the original menu, but over the years chefs came and went, tinkering with the food. Critics carped, but we all knew that it didn’t really matter who was at the helm. You ordered like a Master of the Universe: oysters heaped with pearls of caviar, whole lobes of foie gras in Sauternes, burnished ducks and butter-braised lobsters. And you took your time with Kevin Zraly’s wine list, which was, of course, one of the largest in the world, offering everything from rare Napa Valley Chardonnays to the magnificent Bordeaux of 1982. A soufflé was the only way to end. Or you could opt for the dacquoise, all crunch and crackle. Then you pushed your plate away and, in the early years, at least, settled back with a cigar to watch night capture the city.
The ride down seemed faster. But even when you were finally on the ground, your head stayed up there. It’s been said we’ve romanticized the place after the horror of what happened there. I’d say we romanticized it all along. It was never about the food. It was about ambition and dreams. It was a temple of New York magic.
Windows on the World restaurant, on the 106th and 107th floors of the WTC North Tower, 2000
Windows on the World was closed following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. When it reopened in summer 1996, the Greatest Bar on Earth and Cellar in the Sky (renamed as Wild Blue in 1999) replaced the original restaurant offshoots. In 2000 (its last full year of operation), Windows on the World reported revenues of $37 million, making it the highest-grossing restaurant in the United States. The Sky Dive Restaurant on the 44th floor of the North Tower was also operated by Windows on the World. In its last iteration, Windows on the World received mixed reviews. Ruth Reichi, a New York Times food critic, said in December 1996 that "nobody will ever go to Windows on the World just to eat, but even the fussiest food person can now be content dining at one of New York's favorite tourist destinations". She gave the restaurant two out of four stars, signifying a "very good" quality. In his 2009 book Appetite, William Grimes wrote that, "At Windows, New York was the main course".
Tom Snyder At Windows On The World Restaurant, WTC (1998)
Michael Lomonaco - Michael is now executive chef and managing partner at Porter House New York, a restaurant he opened in 2006. Lomonaco escaped the September 11th attacks when he stopped first at the lobby of 1 World Trade Center to get his glasses fixed. The first plane crashed when he was about to head upstairs, and he was evacuated from the lobby shortly afterwards.
Michael Lomonaco (born January 2, 1955) is an American chef, restaurateur, and television personality. He is best known as the chef/director for Windows on the World, the restaurant located atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The restaurant was destroyed in the September 11th attacks, and all of the staff members who were working in the restaurant at the time of the attack died. Lomonaco survived because he was in the tower's lobby during the attacks and was then evacuated from the building. He has rebounded with the opening of Porter House New York, which was named by Esquire one of America's Best New Restaurants in October 2006.
North Tower (1WTC) and 6 World Trade Center as seen from the WTC Plaza. From the original description: "…a woman climbed onto the sculpture in the centre, stripped and started shouting at the top of her voice."
The original World Trade Center had a massive, five-acre (two-hectare) plaza which all of the buildings in the complex, including the Twin Towers, centered around. In 1982, the immense plaza between the twin towers was renamed after the man who authorized the construction of the original World Trade Center: Port Authority's late chairman, Austin J. Tobin. During the summer, the Port Authority installed a portable stage, typically backed up against the North Tower within Tobin Plaza for musicians and performers. The odd layout for performances was due to the installation of a sculpture in the center of the plaza, which only allowed for about 6,000 fans. The plaza was pervaded by background music that came from installed loudspeakers. For many years, the Plaza was often beset by brisk winds at ground level owing to the Venturi effect between the two towers. Some gusts were so strong that pedestrians' travel had to be aided by ropes. In 1999, the outdoor plaza reopened after undergoing $12 million in renovations. This involved replacing marble pavers with gray and pink granite stones, adding new benches, planters, new restaurants, food kiosks and outdoor dining areas.
Battery Park - The Sphere | * The Sphere * Dedicated March 11, 2002 * Description: Temporary Installation of artwork salvaged from WTC Disaster Site. The 25’ high sphere stood in the WTC Plaza as a monument to world peace from 1971 to September 11, 2001.
Photo: kally210
The Sphere (officially Große Kugelkaryatide N.Y., also known as Sphere at Plaza Fountain, WTC Sphere or Koenig Sphere) is a monumental cast bronze sculpture by German artist Fritz Koenig (1924–2017).
The world's largest bronze sculpture of modern times stood between the twin towers on the Austin J. Tobin Plaza of the World Trade Center in New York City from 1971 until the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. The work, weighing more than 20 tons, was the only remaining work of art to be recovered largely intact from the ruins of the collapsed twin towers after the attacks. After being dismantled and stored near a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the sculpture was the subject of the 2001 documentary Koenig's Sphere. Since then, the bronze sphere, primarily known in the United States as The Sphere, has been transformed into a symbolic memorial to commemorate 9/11. After the spherical caryatid found a temporary location in New York's Battery Park between 2002 and 2017, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey moved it back close to its original location. Having become a major tourist attraction, the unrestored sculpture was rededicated on August 16, 2017, by the Port Authority at a permanent location in Liberty Park overlooking the September 11th Memorial and its original location.
In March 1965, the Port Authority began acquiring property at the World Trade Center site. Demolition work began on March 21st, 1966, to clear thirteen square blocks of low rise buildings in Radio Row for its construction. Groundbreaking for the construction of the World Trade Center took place on August 5, 1966. The site of the World Trade Center was located on filled land with the bedrock located 65 feet (20 m) below. To construct the World Trade Center, it was necessary to build a "bathtub" with a slurry wall around the West Street side of the site, to keep water from the Hudson River out. The slurry method selected by the Port Authority's chief engineer, John M. Kyle, Jr., involved digging a trench, and as excavation proceeded, filling the space with a "slurry" mixture composed of bentonite and water, which plugged holes and kept groundwater out. When the trench was dug out, a steel cage was inserted and concrete was poured in, forcing the "slurry" out. It took fourteen months for the slurry wall to be completed. It was necessary before the excavation of material from the interior of the site could begin. The 1,200,000 cubic yards (920,000 m3) of excavated material were used (along with other fill and dredge material) to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street to form Battery Park City..
The reinforced wall of the Bathtub. You can see the West Side Highway beside it, and the original glass Pavilion of Brookfield Place right across the Highway. Source: Melinda Applegate.
9/11 - The bathtub withstood the weight of the collapsed towers..
In the wake of 9/11, the Bathtub was a major source of concern for the crew working on rescue and recovery. The falling structures had destroyed large sections of the slurry wall support, leaving much of the Bathtub unsupported and deformed. The wall had begun to strain under the inward pressure of the surrounding water table: some sections of the wall had moved inwards by as much as 10 inches. Thankfully, the wall stood its ground. A breach in the Bathtub wall would have led to flooding in the Ground Zero site, which would have endangered the onsite crew and also led to flooding in nearby areas such as the PATH terminal. Re-anchoring and rehabilitating the wall had to be first completed before the crew could access the levels below ground.
One World Trade Center
The New WTC
The Bathtub has long been restored and work on the new WTC nears completion. The restored Bathtub now boasts a new concrete lining that further reinforces the original walls. The new WTC complex hosts a transportation hub underground, as well as a huge underground retail mall that is two levels deep and will host 150 retail brands. The mall cost $1.4bn to build, and will command rents of up to $500/sq foot (the mall in the original WTC housed 80 retail outlets, and was renown for generating more than $900 a square foot before 9/11). The importance of the Bathtub to the restoration of the WTC site has not gone unnoticed: instead it has come to be seen as a symbol of resilience and recovery, so much so that a portion of it is left exposed in the National September 11 Memorial Museum. The brainchild of architect Daniel Libeskind, the Foundation Hall in the Museum allows visitors to get up close and personal with the slurry wall.
The Foundation Hall in the September 11 Memorial Museum. Source: The 9/11 Memorial - A large section of the Bathtub slurry wall is on display at the 911 Memorial Museum..
Daniel Libeskind - Architect at Ground Zero
The original World Trade Center Mall
Westfield World Trade Center is a shopping mall at the World Trade Center complex in Manhatta, New York, that is operated and managed by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. The mall opened on August 16, 2016 as the largest shopping complex in Manhattan, with 125 retail spaces. It replaced the Mall at the World Trade Center, the underground shopping mall under the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed on September 11th, 2001..
Westfield World Trade Center
Westfield World Trade Center is Lower Manhattan's new meeting point. This is where 60,000 neighborhood residents, 300,000 daily commuters, and an additional 15 million global travelers are expected to converge by 2017— visiting the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, 1 WTC Observatory and other local points of interest.
There are few places in the world as "connected" as Westfield World Trade Center. The property's light-filled centerpiece, known as The Oculus and designed by internationally acclaimed architect Santiago Calatrava, provides connections to 13 subway / PATH trains, as well as many of the ferries coming and going from Manhattan to New Jersey and Brooklyn.
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Battery Park City sits on New York Harbor, offering unparalleled views of the New York City skyline, Hudson River, iconic landmarks Lady Liberty and Ellis Island, Governor’s Island, and Liberty State Park.
Established in 1968, the Battery Park City Authority was charged with developing and maintaining a well-balanced community on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, in place of where deteriorating piers once stood in the Hudson River. Battery Park City has achieved worldwide acclaim as a model for community renewal. Through a public/private partnership between the Battery Park City Authority and private developers, this planned community has become a blueprint for successful urban development. The earliest ideas for Battery Park City were precipitated by the collapsing status of 20 piers in the Hudson River, which, through the 1950s, had handled produce for the Washington Market in the area now known as Tribeca. Many plans for Battery Park City were proposed at the time, all with three common goals: to expand the area of Lower Manhattan, attract residents to live Downtown, and to develop additional parks & open spaces.
The ground excavated for the World Trade Center became Battery Park City. Bare landfill formed a beach in July 1983.
Environmental Artist Agnes Denes walks on a field of corn in Battery Park City landfill..
Photo courtesy the artist and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.
In 1982, the artist Agnes Denes planted two acres of wheat on landfill that would become Battery Park City, a new outcropping on the Manhattan waterfront created as a result of excavation for the World Trade Center in the 1970s. You might also recall the indelible images of the Battery Park landfill used as a sandy beach during this time. But Denes’ Wheatfield — A Confrontation was particularly striking, especially looking at the photos today. The work called attention to the large-scale change to the city’s waterfront over the centuries and gave a glimpse of what could be possible, heralding the more ecological approaches since promulgated by projects like the BIG U/Dryline by Bjarke Ingels Group.
Wheatfield - A Confrontation was sponsored by the Public Art Fund, the second work in its Urban Environmental Site Program, that sought to bring attention to the abandoned or empty places on New York CIty’s waterfront. Denes and her team hand-dug 285 furrows by hand, removing the rocks and garbage that had accumulated on the site, and then put the seeds into the furrows. The Public Art Fund says that each furrow took two to three hours to do, and after Denes and her team “Denes and her assistants maintained the field for four months, set up an irrigation system, weeded, put down fertilizers, cleared off rocks, boulders and wires by hand, and sprayed against mildew.” On August 16th, in the middle of installation, she “harvested the crop, yielding almost 1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.” Emma Enderby, Senior Curator of The Shed, says today that “Agnes Denes was ahead of her time. She saw the coming of an ecological crisis, and in the 1960s started working with land, mathematics, philosophy, language, and technology to consider and offer solutions to the challenges facing humanity. She alerted us to humanitarian and environmental issues through beautiful, sensual visual forms combined with a deeply researched and scholarly philosophy. Her vision was radical, and in retrospect, terrifyingly prophetic.”
In January of 1967, the Port Authority awarded $74 million in contracts to various steel suppliers. Construction work began on the North Tower in August of 1968, and construction on the South Tower was under way by January 1969. The original Hudson Tubes, which carried PATH trains into Hudson Terminal, remained in service during the construction process until 1971, when a new station opened. The topping out ceremony of 1 WTC (North Tower) took place on December 23, 1970, while 2 WTC's ceremony (South Tower) occurred on July 19th, 1971. Extensive use of prefabricated components helped to speed up the construction process, and the first tenants moved into the North Tower in December 15, 1970, while it was still under construction, while the South Tower began accepting tenants in January 1972. When the World Trade Center twin towers were completed, the total costs to the Port Authority had reached $900 million. The ribbon cutting ceremony took place on April 4th, 1973.
In addition to the twin towers, the plan for the World Trade Center complex included four other low-rise buildings, which were built in the early 1970s. The 47-story 7 World Trade Center building was added in the 1980s, to the north of the main complex. Altogether, the main World Trade Center complex occupied a 16-acre (65,000 m2) superblock.
The Big Apple seemed to be rotting from within during the 1970s. Crime was everywhere and the city was struggling to deal with a major fiscal crisis. The city's subway system wasn't faring much better. Crime, graffiti, and frequent mechanical breakdowns were mainstays of New York subways throughout the decade. Photographer Erik Calonius snapped several shots of the bleak situation in April of 1973. Riding the subway in 1970 only cost 30 cents — a dramatic hike from the previous fare of 15 cents. Fare increases usually caused ridership to plunge.
To discourage crime, the Transit Police closed the rear half of subway trains between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. in order to make cars easier to monitor. Despite attempts to prevent crime, robberies and attacks persisted throughout the decade.
Plans to build the World Trade Center were controversial. Its site was the location of Radio Row, home to hundreds of commercial and industrial tenants, property owners, small businesses, and approximately 100 residents, many of whom fiercely resisted forced relocation. A group of affected small businesses sought an injunction challenging the Port Authority's power of an eminent domain. The case made its way through the court system to the United States Supreme Court, it refused to hear the case.
Private real-estate developers and members of the Real Estate Board of New York, led by Empire State Building owner Lawrence A. Wren, expressed concerns about this much "subsidized" office space going on the open market, competing with the private sector, when there was already a glut of vacancies. The World Trade Center itself was not rented out completely until after 1979 and then only because the complex's subsidy by the Port Authority made rents charged for its office space cheaper than those for comparable space in other buildings. Others questioned whether the Port Authority should have taken on a project described by some as a "mistaken social priority".
The 1970s were also the age of graffiti in the New York subway system. Modern day graffiti spread to New York from Philadelphia in the early 1970s.
Trains completely covered in graffiti were called "masterpieces."
The World Trade Center's design aesthetics attracted criticism from the American Institute of Architects and other groups. Lewis Mumford, author of The City in History and other works on urban planning, criticized the project, describing it and other new skyscrapers as "just glass-and-metal filing cabinets". The Twin Towers were described as looking similar to "the boxes that the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building came in. Many disliked the twin towers' narrow office windows, which were only 18 inches (46 cm) wide and framed by pillars that restricted views on each side to narrow slots. Activist and sociologist Jane Jacobs argued the waterfront should be kept open for New Yorkers to enjoy.
Mayor of New York John Lindsay (Left) and city council president Frank O'Connor ride the subway.. (No graffiti visible)
By tagging all five boroughs, graffiti writers could become known as "kings."
So many cars were spray-painted that New York City Mayor John Lindsay declared war on graffiti in 1972.
Throughout the decade, stagnating wages for transit workers and New York City's fiscal crisis caused the threat of transit strikes to loom over the subway system. During the 1970s, annual ridership plummeted from 1.3 billion trips to around 1 billion trips — a drop double to that of the city's population drain.
John Lindsay goes shirtless in his bid to become New York Mayor - Photo taken along Rockaway Beach July 4th 1965
She was a warrior for neighborhoods who stopped highways from piercing through lower Manhattan in the 1950s and 60s. Activist Jane Jacobs was a self-taught city planner whose activism and research helped change the course of American urban development, and redefine what it means for a city to be "great."
On February 13, 1975, a three-alarm fire broke out on the North Tower's 11th floor. It spread to the 9th and 14th floors after igniting telephone cable insulation in a utility shaft that ran vertically between floors. Areas at the furthest extent of the fire were extinguished almost immediately; the original fire was put out in a few hours. Most of the damage was concentrated on the 11th floor, fueled by cabinets filled with paper, alcohol-based fluid for office machines, and other office equipment. Fireproofing protected the steel and there was no structural damage to the tower. In addition to fire damage on the 9th through the 14th floors, the water used to extinguish the fire damaged a few of the floors below. At that time, the World Trade Center had no fire sprinkler systems installed. Common sense prevailed and on March 12th, 1981 the Port Authority announced a $45 million plan to install sprinklers throughout the World Trade Center complex..
By Fire Engineering Staff
10.1.1975
The fire that started shortly before midnight last February 13 on the 11th floor in the North Tower, or 1 World Trade Center, involved about 9000 square feet on the floor of origin and spread to telephone equipment closets on the 9th through the 19th floors. Fire came out vents in phone closet doors on the 12th and 13th floors and ignited office files. The phone closet fires were quickly extinguished, although the phone panels and wiring in three closets were destroyed and the equipment in the eight other closets was severely damaged.
Three alarms were struck for the fire in the North Tower, which with its twin South Tower shares the distinction of being the world’s tallest building—110 stories and 1350 feet—for the shortest time when the skyscraper title went to the 1454-foot Sears Building in Chicago. Half the contents of the offices of R. J. Saunders & Company in the southeast corner of the 11th floor were destroyed and the remainder was damaged.
A fire broke out on 13th February 1975 in the North Tower Floor 11..
Among the recommendations made in the report of the New York Board of Fire Underwriters is the installation of sprinklers in stores and areas containing large amounts of combustible material or highly combustible material. The report pointed to the increased use of combustible furniture, partitions, carpeting and wall finishes in offices and mentioned in particular “highly flammable foamed polyurethane and foamed rubber cushioning” that can burn so rapidly that it is “a threat to people in the immediate or nearby areas.” The fire danger of large amounts of paper in offices and open-rack storage files also was mentioned. Return air shafts in unsprinklered buildings, the report continued, should nave detectors on each floor to cause the air-conditioning system to discharge the return air and stop delivering fresh air to the fire area. If such a system is not feasible, then activation of the detector should shut down the air-conditioning system. A warning was given that polyurethane foam insulation on a wall can burn so fast that the flames will race ahead of the fusing of sprinkler heads and therefore, when polyurethane foam is used in walls, shafts or concealed spaces, it always should be enclosed by a noncombustible thermal barrier. Also mentioned were the vertical shafts around columns or in the interior skin of high-rise buildings that allow fire to spread from one floor to another because the only barrier to fire in these voids is flammable plastic foam. It was recommended that these voids have the same protection as other shafts to maintain fire integrity between floors. Sprayed fireproofing, it was noted, is subject to different conditions in the testing laboratory than in the field. The report explained that properly formulated material sprayed to the right thickness “may not adhere to the surface or may be knocked off as other building services are installed” with the result that “the expected fire resistance is not there when it is needed.” The number of wires and cables needed to supply the large amount of electrical and communications equipment in office buildings present another fire problem. The report stated the need for fire stopping where wires or cables enter power or telephone closets. At the World Trade Center, telephone panels and wiring were completely burned out in closets on three floors, the report noted, and there was severe fire damage in eight other phone closets.