World Trade Center: The Tallest Building In The World

By | December 18, 2019

test article image
World Trade Center (Photo by Boris Spremo/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

The World Trade Center will forever be associated with the tragedy of September 11, 2001, but for 27 years the Twin Towers stood as an architectural marvel and a symbol of New York City. A giant ape climbed the towers in a remake of King Kong, and a Frenchman walked on a wire stretched between them. When completed, the World Trade Center stood as the tallest building in the world; though it lost that title just a year later, the Twin Towers continued to loom large in the imagination of a generation that had watched their construction with awe.

Few things are as stunning as a beautiful piece of architecture. Not only does a massive building say something about the infrastructure used to create it, but it shows what people can accomplish when we work together. By the time the World Trade Center's towers were completed in 1973, they were 110 stories tall and took up 10 million square feet of space. The towers took up serious real estate and changed the makeup of the city forever.

An Idea Is Born

test article image
source: Tripod

Long before the Twin Towers went up they were simply the dream of Winthrop W. Aldrich, one of the organizers of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He wanted to create a physical space where there could be a permanent trade exposition in the Big Apple. His concept was hatched in the middle of World War II, a time when all of America’s resources were being diverted towards defeating the axis, so the initial concept never came to fruition.

In 1959 Aldrich’s nephew, David Rockefeller, latched onto the idea as a way to revitalize lower Manhattan. He created the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association and started working on a project to create a 70 story, $250 million complex where the Fulton Fish Market sits on the East River.