WTC: going up!
Today the new and not-quite-finished World Trade Center, called the Freedom Tower, outstrips the Empire State building in height.
That is, if you don’t count antennae. Antennae are a bit problematic in the building-height sweepstakes, and if the Empire State’s antenna is counted, it would exceed the height of the new WTC today but not when the latter is finished.
And then there’s the spire (are you still with me?). A spire is more ambiguous, sometimes counted and sometimes not, depending on the school of counting-thought and whether the spire contains an antenna.
Sheesh.
Here’s a projection of what the new skyline will look like:
I feel it is sadly indicative of our society that it has taken so long to rebuild a tall, magnificent building at the WTC site.
With a little bit of luck and a fair wind at our back it should be done in time for the next war.
WTC Tower has another year of construction scheduled. Can’t remember offhand when they began construction…But, ain’t it weird as hell that the awesome Empire State Building took 1-year+45 days to build? How’bout that progress. And it would have sustained a fueled airliner hit with, certainly much damage and death, but it never would have collapsed. I’ll take it and the beautiful Chrysler Building any day.
Actually, I was never that much of a fan of the WTC itself, it did have an iconic quality to it but that was more due to its dual structure than anything else. It was definitely a brutal building, as many structures were that were completed in the 70s-80s. (I strongly recommend reading From Bauhaus to Our House, by Tom Wolfe… it was the book he wrote after The Right Stuff and is an interesting commentary on the whole minimalist architecture movement)
And I was talking with an architect about the WTC, it was constructed in a narrow range of time when the techniques were amenable to its destruction in that form… If it were being built today (and I’ll presume the current ones ARE designed to do so) then the exterior members would have been (IIRC, any error is my own faulty memory) prestressed concrete, and almost certainly would have sheared off the fuel tanks, that is the wings, leaving most of the explosion outside the building, and probably surviving the attack semi-intact (you might still have had to destroy the building but it wouldn’t have suffered catastrophic failure and collapsed, killing people as it did)
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I recall one architectural review that commented that the ESB and the CB both said “Look At MEEEeee!!!”, the WTC said, “Move Along, You Insignificant Turd!”
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Speaking of planes crashing into the ESB, I’d call attention to the fact that one did, in 1945… a B-25 crashed into it in a heavy fog (There’s a picture of the ESB on fire, there)
I LIKE the new look.
…and my favorite skyscraper of all time is the Chrysler Building.
The WTC was conceived and built by the Port Authority of NY and NJ, ruled by (Generallisimo) Robert Moses. From Wiki:
“Never elected to public office, Moses was responsible for the creation and leadership of numerous public authorities which he could control without having to answer to the general public or to elected officials. It is due to Moses that there are a disproportionate number of public benefit corporations in New York state, which are the prime mode of infrastructure building and maintenance in New York, and are currently responsible for 90% of the state’s debt.”
Uhh..90%.