One World Trade Center officially opens in Manhattan on November 3, 2014. The new tower, along with the rest of the World Trade Center complex, replaced the Twin Towers and the surrounding complex, which were destroyed by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
As the city and nation turned away from the attacks, which sparked the series of US-led military operations dubbed the War on Terror, it was decided that the Twin Towers should be replaced with new apartment buildings. of offices, parks, a museum and a memorial to those who died. In 2002, after the cleanup and salvage efforts ended, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced a competition to find the chief architect for the new structure. Daniel Libeskind, an American-Polish architect then in charge of a studio in Berlin, won and became the site manager. In reality, however, a number of people and entities, including then-Governor George Pataki, tenant Larry Silverstein, and the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, have argued over what it is. would happen to the space commonly known as “Ground Zero. “
The initial plans for the site were imbued with post 9/11 patriotic sentiment. Libeskind designed an asymmetrical tower that evoked the Statue of Liberty and stood at the same height as the original World Trade Center, topped with a spire towering 1,776 feet. Pataki nicknamed it the “Freedom Tower,” a name that became popular but had largely disappeared by the time One World Trade Center opened.
In 2004, Silverstein’s favorite architect, David Childs, officially took over, with Libeskind remaining as site planner. Childs’ “final” design, a symmetrical and more traditional tower that tapers into an octagon at its midpoint and then back into a rectangular prism, was unveiled in 2005. The New York Police Department asked to other modifications, including a solid without a window. concrete basis. Intended to protect against truck bombs and other potential attacks, the base has been criticized as “a grotesque attempt to hide. [the building’s] underlying paranoia ”by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff.
Although its cornerstone was laid in 2004, construction of One World Trade did not begin until the summer of 2006. The slow pace of construction – the tower was ‘topped’ in August 2012 and the spire did not was installed only in May 2013 – was common. source of consternation for the promoters of the building and the city. At the same time, it allowed the tower to become more than a reminder of what had been lost. As architecture critic Kurt Andersen said, “The fact that it took over a decade to finish, I think – the gradualism – makes this iconic sense of rebirth more acute and compelling.
Ahead of the opening, media conglomerate Condé Nast announced that it would move its New York headquarters from Times Square to One World Trade Center, occupying floors 20 through 44. Its location and the legacy of the original World Trade Center have makes the tower a natural fit for many financial institutions, but developers of the building have made an effort to attract a diverse group of tenants, including media and technology companies. Known for its floor-to-ceiling, 360-degree views of Manhattan, Long Island, New Jersey and New York Harbor, One World Trade is now one of the most notable features of the Manhattan skyline, a tribute to buildings that came before it but a 21st century New York phenomenon in its own right.
READ MORE: How Ground Zero Was Rebuilt
