OP’s pic I can only describe as beautiful.
That being said, I don’t think the twin towers aged well. By 2000 they looked like 70s relics, albeit massive and iconic ones.
I’ve always been of the unpopular opinion that One World Trade (Freedom Tower) is much nicer than the originals. I love it and I think it’ll stand the rest of time.
Exactly. We should not be so fast to throw away past design because it’s not following a current trend. The twins were iconic and if they were still around I’m certain they would still guide people home as they did back then. I don’t think there new albeit nice but too commoditized WTC does that at all. Newer is not always better
I agree. The twin towers were still very impressive in the 90s and 00s in person. I think images failed to capture it then because of all the congestion of the area smogging up the skies.
In Belgium, [we just take old buildings and add something on top of them](https://www.portofantwerpbruges.com/en/our-port/visit/port-house-antwerp) to make more space. Not sure if you can call this "best of both worlds", but it does look quite unique.
And here Ted Mosby is trying to tear down the Arcadian, despite saying that the gothic trim is iconic. Booooooooo Ted Mosby! Him and his fat cat friends are a bunch of weiners and gonads. Except for Barney Stintson.
I hear that guy's awesome.
I saw something, somewhere (of course I can’t remember where) saying that they looked like the boxes the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building came packaged in.
I have to strongly disagree. These new buildings do not evoke any kind of feeling for the object to me. Mostly they all try too hard in certain ways and are fairly common in features. The twins were unparalleled. They were iconic the world over. 1WTC now just doesn’t have that.
I think if the twins existed today they would probably be on evilbuildings, given how the still loomed over the landscape and cultural sentiment towards bankers filling those floors. The twins were unparalleled because they were both tall, but they would be grouped in with ultra high resi towers at this point.
The two square reflection pools of the 9/11 memorial that have the names of all that were lost etched into the side - they sit in the exact footprint of where the towers once stood which imo is such a great way to memorialize them
There’s a massive commercial real estate crisis brewing right now because of remote work and less need for business space. It’s a good thing they didn’t build two of them.
About six weeks ago, I was on 28th, between 6th and 7th, 33 floors up, watching the sun go down and it was reflecting so beautifully off of the new WTC building.
what I liked most about it is the edges
when you stand right beside it and you look up you get the impression that it’s infinitely high. like if it were a true sky scraper
My father was an architect and he visited me when I was living in New York and we went to visit various famous buildings. He refused to even go in to the World Trade Center.
This was after the first time that assholes tried to destroy it with the van full of explosives in the parking garage. He said that he had attended a seminar where they concluded that the building had come extremely close to collapsing from that.
He went on at length about shitty 70s NYC construction, about corruption in the port authority, about short-cuts and cheap materials and mob skimming etc. etc. etc.
He thought that they might just collapse at any moment.
The Citibank tower was another 70s skyscraper that could have very easily been a calamity.
Building standards are much better now.
> This was after the first time that assholes tried to destroy it with the van full of explosives in the parking garage. He said that he had attended a seminar where they concluded that the building had come extremely close to collapsing from that
I read differently - that despite the bomb being right up against the subgrade exterior columns of the north tower, the tower structure was barely affected. There are pictures which show the damage being pretty much limited to one of the crossbraces shearing off at the welds.
See slides 41 and 42 in https://assets.ccaps.umn.edu/documents/CPE-Conferences/structural/2022StructuralEnglot1.pdf
> OP’s pic I can only describe as beautiful.
It's also because you're comparing a beautifully composed photo to that taken by some woman going to Staten Island while using her 2011 Android.
What's cool is that around that time there was actually beachfront in lower Manhattan:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/battery-park-city-beach.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/battery-park-city-beach.html)
I got a job downtown Chicago when I was first out of college. All my training was done on the ~50th floor and I was super excited to be placed on the east side of the building thinking I'd be looking out over the lake every day... I ended up on the ~20th floor but the buildings next to us were a couple floors taller. So I got a great view of another business in a brick building 50 feet away rather than getting to see the lake and sailboats every day.
I had a water front office in Sydney Harbour overlooking the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and ferry terminal... it was SO hard to get work done.
I have no idea the amount of time I spent day dreaming just staring out the window. Such a relaxing beautiful view.
on the east side of downtown that happened...like...3 times?
pearl street was the waterfront
then they created the aptly named water street
that wasn't enough so they made the aptly named front street
finally they made the aptly named south street
since that wasn't enough either moses built a highway on top of it
another fun fact: the fort (i.e., the battery) of battery park used to be out in the harbor, surrounded by water on all sides
Yea. Northern coastal cities expand into the water a lot. A large chunk of Boston is just trash they dumped in the harbor and built on. It's part of why the Big Dig was such a shitshow.
And [Here](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/K2EHP1/one-world-trade-center-in-lower-manhattan-as-seen-from-the-hudson-K2EHP1.jpg) is what it looks like more recently.
I strongly recommend having a seance and allowing the spirit of Philippe Petit to possess you, in order to experience his memories of that great performance.
I remember his story being incredible, but then he immediately cheated on his gf after his amazing feat and they didn't have to include that in the story but they did...
yeah he's pretty much stereotypically french. he's like i love all these women, it would be a shame if i didn't have sex with all of them, and then get mad when some of them get mad for me not paying enough attention to them.
he's like yes, i had a loving girlfriend that stayed with me the entire time i was trying to perform my art, and then i got sort of famous and was able to have sex with almost anyone i wanted to. and for some reason my long time girlfriend that supported me for over a decade is mad that i then went to have sex with multiple strangers.
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Philippe Petit!! Man on Wire was such a great film!! There is a great report on Petit in the Paris Review https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/03/philippe-petit-artist-of-life/
It’s actually pretty spot-on to the real guy, who had a stereotypical French accent.
Somewhat related, in Hulu’s The Looming Tower series people criticized Tahar Rahim’s performance as Ali Soufan and even some pro critics said he spoke in an awkward and stilted way that isn’t believable for an American. But if you watch the real Soufan speak, it’s actually a phenomenal replication.
Along the line of feats, I watched a bunch of 9-11 videos this week and noticed close-ups of the outer walls. A question popped in my mind: did anyone try to climb down after the attack? The exterior was vertical steel columns about 18 inches apart so it seemed possible. I read one man was observed trying, and got down almost 20 stories. Apparently there were openings at the maintenance floors starting at level 76, where the stairways were not impacted. Unfortunately, the other tower fell while he was out there, and he wasn't seen again. Due to sudden change in pressure from the other building's displacement, a rush of air likely blew him off.
Loved watching this in school.
In fact it’s inspired me to illegally climb to the top of Chicago’s Sears tower and smoke weed up there so that I can be the highest in the city (both ways).
I probably won’t ever do this, but I’d like to 😊
It really is, I was 1 when the towers fell, and I grew up in nyc. I'm feeling an odd sense of missing out reading this thread with everyone reminiscing
I used to watch the skyline as I laid in the backseat as my parents took the bridge out of the city. I’d lazily watch the towers and envision them as a brother and sister watching over the city. I loved those buildings.
That is the sweetest memory and I’ll always think of them that way now.
I remember in the days and weeks after 9/11 there were interviews with people talking about how they feel about having to go about their regular lives again. There was a boy who lived across the river with a view of the towers who always slept with his curtains open so he could see them from his bed. He said after that day he never kept his curtains open at night, he didn’t want to look at the skyline without them.
I was there either in 76 or 77, first year of college. Wow. Top floor, dry wall wasn't painted yet. I forget which tower and you saw them like waving in the wind. SO dam cool.
It's what you did. Buddy I went to see the WTC, this amazing new THING, came from PA. Hated NYC, it looked wonderful that day you know?
I'll always be glad we went. That's what I remember, those things waving around way up there. So odd. It was another one of those perfect blue, blue days too. Huh.
Honestly, while they're physically imposing, and an engineering marvel, I always thought "giant rectangles" was rather unimaginative. as a design it's like someone took a kid's toy block and stood it on end.
I think at the time they contrasted with the other tallest towers in the world, which were tapered or stepped at the top in some way. I’m no architect but I think they were meant to be a bit defiant or something.
I've heard that the locals hated the design and thought it was ugly. It wasn't until Philippe Petit strung a wire between them and walked across them that people started to accept their own distinct beauty. I've always thought they were Bauhaus beautiful; strangely ugly at first glance, but then charmingly magnificent upon closer inspection.
Edit: grammar
Many Parisians still think it is horrifically ugly. The joke is: why do Parisians like to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower? Because it’s the only place in Paris where you can’t see the Eiffel Tower.
Until you go inside, and see the sheer amount of space that can be used. It is damn impressive. I went inside when I was 15 years old and even my punk 15 year old self could appreciate it's massiveness.
Each building had **99 elevators, 198 elevators in total.** It was so large is had it's **own zip code (10048)**. On a typical weekday, an estimated **50,000 people worked in the complex** and another **140,000 passed through as visitors**. **13,400,000 square feet** of office space. Absolutely insane.
This fact always scares the shit out of me because like... what if the attack wasn't first thing in the morning? What if it was in the middle of the day?
The first plane hit at 8:14am, just when people were starting to get to the office. 3000 people never made it out alive. How many more people would have died if those planes hit just before the lunch rush started? When the buildings were packed?
I think the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned that the hijackers chose early morning flights because they had fewer passengers, so it would be easier to control them.
Or if the 93 bombing succeeded when there were 30,000 people in the building. It almost did if the bomb had been placed a little bit closer to a support column.
The day the buildings went down, I remember thinking about all the computers that must have been in them. I was (and still am) a computer nerd, always fretting over the latest hardware. But back then, I was a college student and money was tight. So the thought of thousands of computers getting crushed just sent a chill down my spine. Then I realized how messed up it was to be more concerned about the computer hardware than the lives that were lost.
We lost a lot more other things too. Lots of pieces of art inside the buildings are gone. In the plaza, there were multiple sculptures that were lost (the Sphere was mostly intact, pieces of the Three Wings were found, a piece of the 1993 memorial fountain survived, and the pyramids survived but had to be destroyed during the recovery effort). Other things lost included the archives of the Port Authority, photos from the Broadway archives, photos from JFK's presidency, letters from Helen Keller, and the list goes on.
Your comment sent me searching, and I found [this article](https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2021/09/01/what-was-lost-9-11-libraries/) with some detailed info on other lost items. Looks like there was a total of *21* libraries destroyed when the towers fell.
lol, my mom will still occasionally complain about all the CDs she had to re-buy because they were in her desk. I think sometimes our brains latch onto less disturbing thoughts for our own mental well being.
I was just thinking how beautiful they are. I’m a 2000 baby though so all I’ve ever seen of the towers is them being destroyed but I can’t get enough of them. I just think it’s so basic yet so great. And compared to the all glass buildings they build now the steel is amazing to see.
Yes... when you're coming from a history of details and ornamentation... "basic" can be revolutionary.
They are outwardly basic. But it takes skill to essentially hide their complexity with perfectly straight lines.
Tbh I like the twin towers better.
To me there is nothing special about the new WTC. It looks like any other dime a dozen skyscraper, just taller.
As others have said, the twin towers were iconic. As crazy as it seems for such simple, rectangular buildings, they went against the grain of normal tapered architecture and really made a statement.
Imo they also looked better when viewing the skyline as well (as opposed to just analyzing the building itself).
The two towers were iconic. The new WTC is a great design and definitely feels more modern, but to me it will never have the same visual impact as the original towers. I kind of wish they had just rebuilt them exactly as they were.
Which I would assume is intentional? I was thinking about this today as I was looking at the site on google maps/street view. There's a giant absence of architecture, where architecture would've otherwise been. It helps remind us of what was lost.
In a way I think there's something poetic about the new WTC. It's lesser-than. That in itself is a monument to the tragedy.
> Which I would assume is intentional?
The foundation for WTC 2 was completed ten years ago (construction was originally halted because of the 2008 recession), the only reason it hasn't been built yet is because they haven't found a tenant for it. A few businesses poked at it (Fox News, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank), but no one actually sealed the deal. It also wouldn't [look](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/875/c5f/6e483fe7c656f4609df8d6ffe5ee2c6124-2wtc-3.rvertical.w600.jpg) the same as WTC 1.
They were some of the best examples of 1970s architecture. Obviously an incredibly low bar, but definitely iconic. The new one is an above average but very representative example of 2010s architecture. Not nearly as iconic.
it has a lot of very subtle architectural themes that are easy to overlook when it's seen from far away as just a box, you have to look closely to see how interesting it actually is
I worked in the towers years ago. The windows were only 20 inches wide, and set in the very deep outer columns. So unless you went upstairs to the Windows on The World, which had larger spaces between the columns, the view wasn't very panoramic. But still impressive.
I do remember the Battery Park City area before it was all built up. Huge amount of space, and a lot of the fill they used came from the WTC excavations. Someone even planted a field of wheat there one summer as some kind of project. There were also some big parking lots before all the development really took off. I remember taking my car in once in a while on a Friday, and paying $6.00 to park.
I've been to both. While the Sears Tower was taller, the World Trade was a city onto itself. The lobby of of the twin towers and surrounding area were packed with people as there were hundreds of companies located there. I've also been to the new One World Trade and it is amazing but at the time I went was largely empty.
Apparently once they were completed, they weren’t modern and liked.
Not sure how true that is, but was part of a 9/11 YouTube video I watched (about the guy who designed the towers).
If you haven’t, watch Leaning Out - it’s about Leslie Robertson, the design engineer for the towers. I saw either this video or one like it in high school and it inspired me to become an engineer.
Mr. Robertson’s design is the reason the towers stood so long before collapsing, allowing tens of thousands of people to escape. But he was always haunted by the ones who never made it out.
Yeah a lot of New Yorkers didn’t like them. But I’ve always thought they were beautiful and wish I could’ve seen them. And tbh they are nothing compared to shit buildings they are building in NYC now
I went up on them in 1999 at 12. I ate fries in a restaurant on one of the top floors. I don't know why I remember this detail specifically, but it was with a 2-pronged red fork. I distinctly remember how insanely fast the elevators were (my ears popped). It was a cool experience.
Somewhere in my parents' house there's an extra-wide photograph of me holding my arms all the way out to the sides on the observation deck with the bay behind me, and then on the back of that, the same idea (wide arms) from the bay with the WTC behind me.
I often wonder what the world would be like if 9/11/01 never happened. The day trust and peace died together.
Man. Next time we do this whole monolithic tower thing.... let's leave the water view full on.
I always like the look of em.
But damn. It looked even awesomer
We're in the BAD timeline. Something broke here and we're all stuck in this shitfucked version of Earth. While our alternate reality selves are all probably doing MUCH better in life, with less war and hate towards one another.
Really all it took is for Gore to win in 2000. Everything hinged on that -- the Clinton administration was tracking Bin Laden, and the Bush administration ignored the warnings.
A Gore presidency is a presidency focused on environmental issues. At exactly the moment when we needed to be really starting to *work* to reduce the impacts of climate change.
If 9/11 *does* happen, a Gore presidency doesn't respond with war in an unrelated country. I also don't see the USA PATRIOT act being passed. I don't see "you're with authority or you're against America" gaining such a firm foothold. I sure don't see Trump.
And it all came about because the supreme court ordered Florida to stop counting ballots in Florida. With all the noise about 2020 being a stolen election --- 2000 arguably actually *was*. And it changed history for the worse, forever.
For some reason a lot of people don't know the following;
President Clinton passed up on taking Bin Laden out several times because of collateral damage so Gore probably would too. In fact Clinton was down in Australia talking about those times he didn't authorize the hits just hours before the 9/11 attacks began.
President Clinton had already signed into law that the U.S. would carry out a policy of regime change in Iraq. In fact Clinton had already started bombing Iraq in 1998. The so called "Monica's War".
Senator Hillary Clinton voted for war in Iraq and President Clinton's law was used as legal justification of the war.
Another fact a lot of people on here don't know;
Saddam Hussein actually wanted the world to think he had WMD. He fooled everyone into thinking so because he figured that Iran was a bigger threat than the United States. He wanted them to think he had chemical/biological weapons to deter them from war. During the first Gulf War Bush Sr. decided not to go to Baghdad and remove Saddam so Saddam thought the U.S. lacked resolve. We know all of this as a matter of fact because Saddam himself admitted it in his final interviews before the Iraqis hung him.
Another tidbit;
There was an informer named "Curveball" that led western intelligence services to believe Saddam had WMD. His real name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان الجنابي. His lies about his credentials and knowledge of Saddam's weapons programs matched up with what Saddam was leading the world to believe so "Curveball" reinforced the myth. He did this because he wanted to get asylum in Europe. He currently lives in Germany a free man. We know all of this because he admitted it in 2011.
I say all of this because both Democrats and Republicans wanted war in Iraq. In fact so did the American people. A slim majority of them supported an invasion of Iraq 7 months before 9/11 even happened and the overwhelming majority supported the war even after it had begun.
2000 was absolutely a stolen election, and all that went away when 9/11 happened. in early 2004 they got a proper count and found that, gore, had indeed won, worse was in 2006 they discovered the diebold voting machines had been counting Kerry votes for Bush due to a "technical glitch"
Basically Bush was never truly elected. He was appointed.
Nothing came of it because the damage was done and the Bush Family had sway.
At this point we cant even be sure the elections are even being counted properly anymore. Trump's actions during his presidency benefited the right people at the end of the day, Biden has yet to walk back the worst parts of that presidency as Obama failed to walk back Bush' legacy and even extended it.
Post 2000 has been a slow consolidation of power and wealth by the richest members of society to our detriment. People born after 2000 have no idea what we lost.
[Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_trade_center_new_york_city_from_hudson_august_26_2000.jpg) is approximately the same angle in 2000
Definitely doesn’t have the same feel.
OP’s pic I can only describe as beautiful. That being said, I don’t think the twin towers aged well. By 2000 they looked like 70s relics, albeit massive and iconic ones. I’ve always been of the unpopular opinion that One World Trade (Freedom Tower) is much nicer than the originals. I love it and I think it’ll stand the rest of time.
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They said the same thing in the 70s about the Twin Towers
I don't think people were talking about a reddit curse in the 70s
Truly an unsinkable ship.
She’s made of iron, sir.
We did it, reddit!
Honestly, it would only be fitting
RemindMe! 20 years
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Exactly. We should not be so fast to throw away past design because it’s not following a current trend. The twins were iconic and if they were still around I’m certain they would still guide people home as they did back then. I don’t think there new albeit nice but too commoditized WTC does that at all. Newer is not always better
I agree. The twin towers were still very impressive in the 90s and 00s in person. I think images failed to capture it then because of all the congestion of the area smogging up the skies.
In Belgium, [we just take old buildings and add something on top of them](https://www.portofantwerpbruges.com/en/our-port/visit/port-house-antwerp) to make more space. Not sure if you can call this "best of both worlds", but it does look quite unique.
wtf is that it looks like trump
And here Ted Mosby is trying to tear down the Arcadian, despite saying that the gothic trim is iconic. Booooooooo Ted Mosby! Him and his fat cat friends are a bunch of weiners and gonads. Except for Barney Stintson. I hear that guy's awesome.
I saw something, somewhere (of course I can’t remember where) saying that they looked like the boxes the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building came packaged in.
It was a critic who said that shortly after the towers were built. I can never remember his name, but I’ve always loved the quote.
I have to strongly disagree. These new buildings do not evoke any kind of feeling for the object to me. Mostly they all try too hard in certain ways and are fairly common in features. The twins were unparalleled. They were iconic the world over. 1WTC now just doesn’t have that.
I think if the twins existed today they would probably be on evilbuildings, given how the still loomed over the landscape and cultural sentiment towards bankers filling those floors. The twins were unparalleled because they were both tall, but they would be grouped in with ultra high resi towers at this point.
I agree, the new WTC is so beautiful, especially the way it shines blue on sunny days.
I wish they'd build two though to honor the twins legacy. It was iconic in New York despite criticism. Tons of movies had them in shots.
The two square reflection pools of the 9/11 memorial that have the names of all that were lost etched into the side - they sit in the exact footprint of where the towers once stood which imo is such a great way to memorialize them
There’s a massive commercial real estate crisis brewing right now because of remote work and less need for business space. It’s a good thing they didn’t build two of them.
About six weeks ago, I was on 28th, between 6th and 7th, 33 floors up, watching the sun go down and it was reflecting so beautifully off of the new WTC building.
New York is crazy how you can give your 3 dimensional location
what I liked most about it is the edges when you stand right beside it and you look up you get the impression that it’s infinitely high. like if it were a true sky scraper
My father was an architect and he visited me when I was living in New York and we went to visit various famous buildings. He refused to even go in to the World Trade Center. This was after the first time that assholes tried to destroy it with the van full of explosives in the parking garage. He said that he had attended a seminar where they concluded that the building had come extremely close to collapsing from that. He went on at length about shitty 70s NYC construction, about corruption in the port authority, about short-cuts and cheap materials and mob skimming etc. etc. etc. He thought that they might just collapse at any moment. The Citibank tower was another 70s skyscraper that could have very easily been a calamity. Building standards are much better now.
> This was after the first time that assholes tried to destroy it with the van full of explosives in the parking garage. He said that he had attended a seminar where they concluded that the building had come extremely close to collapsing from that I read differently - that despite the bomb being right up against the subgrade exterior columns of the north tower, the tower structure was barely affected. There are pictures which show the damage being pretty much limited to one of the crossbraces shearing off at the welds. See slides 41 and 42 in https://assets.ccaps.umn.edu/documents/CPE-Conferences/structural/2022StructuralEnglot1.pdf
NY for me is a 70s/80s relic. Gritty and crime-riddled boroughs orbiting a coke-powdered Manhattan. I did all my research from network TV and movies.
and from police academy!
> OP’s pic I can only describe as beautiful. It's also because you're comparing a beautifully composed photo to that taken by some woman going to Staten Island while using her 2011 Android.
Those pre-9/11 Androids
I was talking about the Mexican aliens from the future, obviously
2011? /s
Ah yes, the september 1st attacks of 2011. Nevget forer.
Nope. Thanks, American Express.
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The perspective is deceiving. It’s quite a bit of a space.
It’s amazing how little construction there was between the WTC and water in 1976 though. That much available real estate is unthinkable nowadays.
What's cool is that around that time there was actually beachfront in lower Manhattan: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/battery-park-city-beach.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/battery-park-city-beach.html)
Oh wow!
It’s because they reclaimed it. They dumped all the dirt they excavated from the WTC and created what is battery park today.
Battery Park City and the adjacent park. Battery Park has been there for a lot longer.
If I recall correctly and am thinking of the right place (Battery Park City), they reclaimed some land there
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I got a job downtown Chicago when I was first out of college. All my training was done on the ~50th floor and I was super excited to be placed on the east side of the building thinking I'd be looking out over the lake every day... I ended up on the ~20th floor but the buildings next to us were a couple floors taller. So I got a great view of another business in a brick building 50 feet away rather than getting to see the lake and sailboats every day.
I had a water front office in Sydney Harbour overlooking the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and ferry terminal... it was SO hard to get work done. I have no idea the amount of time I spent day dreaming just staring out the window. Such a relaxing beautiful view.
I feel you guys. I work in an office park overlooking an Applebee’s.
True, time spent waiting in the elevator adds up!
Those buildings in the foreground look like crappy cgi
I worked in the one with the cut off pyramid top in 2001. They were fine.
How bizarre
How bizarre
Did they.. did they move the towers back a little bit to do that??
I think they actually built out the island….I didn’t realize it was so recent but battery park city is all filled in Hudson River
That's gotta suck buying waterfront real estate and then someone makes the island bigger and builds in front of you.
ikr imagine having THE city skyline with THE twin towers and having it be ruined by a few shmucks with much less impressive buildings
on the east side of downtown that happened...like...3 times? pearl street was the waterfront then they created the aptly named water street that wasn't enough so they made the aptly named front street finally they made the aptly named south street since that wasn't enough either moses built a highway on top of it another fun fact: the fort (i.e., the battery) of battery park used to be out in the harbor, surrounded by water on all sides
I mean it is a Dutch colony.
Yea. Northern coastal cities expand into the water a lot. A large chunk of Boston is just trash they dumped in the harbor and built on. It's part of why the Big Dig was such a shitshow.
That and corruption.
Some of the soil and rock used for it actually came from digging down to build the foundation of the towers.
Filled with excavation spoils from the world trade center.
Nothing like some land reclamation.
yep… built on rollers…sure did…
Imagine if the towers just rolled out of the way at the last minute.
And [Here](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/K2EHP1/one-world-trade-center-in-lower-manhattan-as-seen-from-the-hudson-K2EHP1.jpg) is what it looks like more recently.
The story of the man who, without permission, set up and walked a tightrope between the towers is a great read.
Go and watch the documentary about it, Man On Wire. The balls on that guy!
The feature film The Walk, based on it, is also really great!
The VR experience, The Walk VR is also great! Who's next?
The true to life experience of setting it up yourself at a like height and distance is also really great!!
The ability to read about all this in the comments of a post on Reddit is excellent as well!
I highly recommend the use of one's imagination to picture all these events, as well!
Don't forget the radio dramatization!
And we cannot forget the nostalgia at the thought of repeating the feat, only to be denied by the total lack of towers presently!
I strongly recommend having a seance and allowing the spirit of Philippe Petit to possess you, in order to experience his memories of that great performance.
The ASCII art depiction in notepad is also really great!!
I love how at the end, the guy basically just stopped talking to the others when he got fame, and they were just like "oh well".
I remember his story being incredible, but then he immediately cheated on his gf after his amazing feat and they didn't have to include that in the story but they did...
yeah he's pretty much stereotypically french. he's like i love all these women, it would be a shame if i didn't have sex with all of them, and then get mad when some of them get mad for me not paying enough attention to them. he's like yes, i had a loving girlfriend that stayed with me the entire time i was trying to perform my art, and then i got sort of famous and was able to have sex with almost anyone i wanted to. and for some reason my long time girlfriend that supported me for over a decade is mad that i then went to have sex with multiple strangers. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Philippe Petit!! Man on Wire was such a great film!! There is a great report on Petit in the Paris Review https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/03/philippe-petit-artist-of-life/
Great doc.
There's also a movie about it starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a ridiculous accent. It's also pretty good.
It’s actually pretty spot-on to the real guy, who had a stereotypical French accent. Somewhat related, in Hulu’s The Looming Tower series people criticized Tahar Rahim’s performance as Ali Soufan and even some pro critics said he spoke in an awkward and stilted way that isn’t believable for an American. But if you watch the real Soufan speak, it’s actually a phenomenal replication.
Along the line of feats, I watched a bunch of 9-11 videos this week and noticed close-ups of the outer walls. A question popped in my mind: did anyone try to climb down after the attack? The exterior was vertical steel columns about 18 inches apart so it seemed possible. I read one man was observed trying, and got down almost 20 stories. Apparently there were openings at the maintenance floors starting at level 76, where the stairways were not impacted. Unfortunately, the other tower fell while he was out there, and he wasn't seen again. Due to sudden change in pressure from the other building's displacement, a rush of air likely blew him off.
Loved watching this in school. In fact it’s inspired me to illegally climb to the top of Chicago’s Sears tower and smoke weed up there so that I can be the highest in the city (both ways). I probably won’t ever do this, but I’d like to 😊
It's as surreal for young people to see photos of them standing as it is for older people to see them gone.
Thats a great thought that never once crossed my mind, thank you
It really is, I was 1 when the towers fell, and I grew up in nyc. I'm feeling an odd sense of missing out reading this thread with everyone reminiscing
And before 1979, as north tower doesn't yet have its huge antenna.
The pool was cold!
I literally watched this for the first time today, weird randomly seeing it referenced so soon
SHRINKAGE!
What? Like a sweater?
It shrinks??
*Like a frightened turtle!*
I don't know how you guys walk around with those things.
Confirmed 1976 was before 1979.
Yeah I remember hanging out in that space. It's landfill from the WTC excavation. There were weird sculptures scattered around it.
I’ve seen photos of people hanging out on a sand beach there
Hudson River in the 70s, that must have been healthy.
Check out The Dentist From New Jersey on Amazon Prime. About a photographer who took thousands of photographs of the WTC during their lifespan.
https://www.amazon.com/Dentist-New-Jersey-Simon-Leventhal/dp/B08DWPCNLV
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Oh! Geeze! Thats awful! *eats entire thing*. Now what do you have to wash that awful taste out of my mouth?
Mountain Dew or Crab juice.
It was the only place a guy could find good crab juice in the city
You have a name I’d love to touch
I used to watch the skyline as I laid in the backseat as my parents took the bridge out of the city. I’d lazily watch the towers and envision them as a brother and sister watching over the city. I loved those buildings.
That is the sweetest memory and I’ll always think of them that way now. I remember in the days and weeks after 9/11 there were interviews with people talking about how they feel about having to go about their regular lives again. There was a boy who lived across the river with a view of the towers who always slept with his curtains open so he could see them from his bed. He said after that day he never kept his curtains open at night, he didn’t want to look at the skyline without them.
:(
❤️ That was beautiful to read. Thank you for sharing.
Wow... had no idea Manhattan has been built out like that.
Yeah. Much of Manhattan was created by filling in land along the banks. Same for Boston.
A ton of the Boston Bay has been reclaimed other than the deepwater channels.
That may be, but the Boston neck won’t be coming back any time soon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Neck
Toronto, too. Our old 1812 era fort is now a great distance from the shoreline it once guarded.
So much evidence for so many crimes must have just been covered unintentionally hehe
I was there either in 76 or 77, first year of college. Wow. Top floor, dry wall wasn't painted yet. I forget which tower and you saw them like waving in the wind. SO dam cool. It's what you did. Buddy I went to see the WTC, this amazing new THING, came from PA. Hated NYC, it looked wonderful that day you know? I'll always be glad we went. That's what I remember, those things waving around way up there. So odd. It was another one of those perfect blue, blue days too. Huh.
Truly a wonderful and fascinating memory worth sharing thank you.
Honestly, while they're physically imposing, and an engineering marvel, I always thought "giant rectangles" was rather unimaginative. as a design it's like someone took a kid's toy block and stood it on end.
The joke after they were built was, welcome to New York City, Home of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the boxes they came in.
That’s good.
Well, it makes sense that they got rid of the boxes after some time :(
lmao good grief
[who’s they?](https://i.makeagif.com/media/4-07-2021/nI98WU.gif)
I think at the time they contrasted with the other tallest towers in the world, which were tapered or stepped at the top in some way. I’m no architect but I think they were meant to be a bit defiant or something.
I've heard that the locals hated the design and thought it was ugly. It wasn't until Philippe Petit strung a wire between them and walked across them that people started to accept their own distinct beauty. I've always thought they were Bauhaus beautiful; strangely ugly at first glance, but then charmingly magnificent upon closer inspection. Edit: grammar
Many Parisians hated the Eiffel Tower and thought it was ugly when it was first built
Many Parisians still think it is horrifically ugly. The joke is: why do Parisians like to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower? Because it’s the only place in Paris where you can’t see the Eiffel Tower.
I don’t know…it’s rather beautiful at night when it’s all lit up.
Just don't photograph it.
Isn’t that said more about the Tour Montparnasse?
Basically every interesting landmark in the world was considered ugly by the locals when it was proposed, and often well after they are finished.
I always thought it was strange they didn't have skybridges between them. Would've been dope.
Very true! That would have been a real cool thing. Especially with a glass floor.
Yeah, they have no delicacy, they are quite powerful
Reminds me of the all boys school I went to
Until you go inside, and see the sheer amount of space that can be used. It is damn impressive. I went inside when I was 15 years old and even my punk 15 year old self could appreciate it's massiveness. Each building had **99 elevators, 198 elevators in total.** It was so large is had it's **own zip code (10048)**. On a typical weekday, an estimated **50,000 people worked in the complex** and another **140,000 passed through as visitors**. **13,400,000 square feet** of office space. Absolutely insane.
This fact always scares the shit out of me because like... what if the attack wasn't first thing in the morning? What if it was in the middle of the day? The first plane hit at 8:14am, just when people were starting to get to the office. 3000 people never made it out alive. How many more people would have died if those planes hit just before the lunch rush started? When the buildings were packed?
I think the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned that the hijackers chose early morning flights because they had fewer passengers, so it would be easier to control them.
That was a common talking point at the time. That at least the attacks didn't happen even an hour later.
Or if the 93 bombing succeeded when there were 30,000 people in the building. It almost did if the bomb had been placed a little bit closer to a support column.
The day the buildings went down, I remember thinking about all the computers that must have been in them. I was (and still am) a computer nerd, always fretting over the latest hardware. But back then, I was a college student and money was tight. So the thought of thousands of computers getting crushed just sent a chill down my spine. Then I realized how messed up it was to be more concerned about the computer hardware than the lives that were lost.
We lost a lot more other things too. Lots of pieces of art inside the buildings are gone. In the plaza, there were multiple sculptures that were lost (the Sphere was mostly intact, pieces of the Three Wings were found, a piece of the 1993 memorial fountain survived, and the pyramids survived but had to be destroyed during the recovery effort). Other things lost included the archives of the Port Authority, photos from the Broadway archives, photos from JFK's presidency, letters from Helen Keller, and the list goes on.
Your comment sent me searching, and I found [this article](https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2021/09/01/what-was-lost-9-11-libraries/) with some detailed info on other lost items. Looks like there was a total of *21* libraries destroyed when the towers fell.
lol, my mom will still occasionally complain about all the CDs she had to re-buy because they were in her desk. I think sometimes our brains latch onto less disturbing thoughts for our own mental well being.
She had a desk in the WTC?
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I was just thinking how beautiful they are. I’m a 2000 baby though so all I’ve ever seen of the towers is them being destroyed but I can’t get enough of them. I just think it’s so basic yet so great. And compared to the all glass buildings they build now the steel is amazing to see.
Yes... when you're coming from a history of details and ornamentation... "basic" can be revolutionary. They are outwardly basic. But it takes skill to essentially hide their complexity with perfectly straight lines.
I think the arches at the base of each tower were beautiful.
On a sunny day you’d go blind trying to look up at them from street level. I’ll never forget that shine.
Well, their own quirk was that there were two of them.
From a design standpoint, I think the new WTC is better and also fits in better with the New York skyline.
Tbh I like the twin towers better. To me there is nothing special about the new WTC. It looks like any other dime a dozen skyscraper, just taller. As others have said, the twin towers were iconic. As crazy as it seems for such simple, rectangular buildings, they went against the grain of normal tapered architecture and really made a statement. Imo they also looked better when viewing the skyline as well (as opposed to just analyzing the building itself).
The two towers were iconic. The new WTC is a great design and definitely feels more modern, but to me it will never have the same visual impact as the original towers. I kind of wish they had just rebuilt them exactly as they were.
I feel like part of that is that WTC2 hasn't been built. It feels kind of empty without it.
Which I would assume is intentional? I was thinking about this today as I was looking at the site on google maps/street view. There's a giant absence of architecture, where architecture would've otherwise been. It helps remind us of what was lost. In a way I think there's something poetic about the new WTC. It's lesser-than. That in itself is a monument to the tragedy.
> Which I would assume is intentional? The foundation for WTC 2 was completed ten years ago (construction was originally halted because of the 2008 recession), the only reason it hasn't been built yet is because they haven't found a tenant for it. A few businesses poked at it (Fox News, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank), but no one actually sealed the deal. It also wouldn't [look](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/875/c5f/6e483fe7c656f4609df8d6ffe5ee2c6124-2wtc-3.rvertical.w600.jpg) the same as WTC 1.
They were some of the best examples of 1970s architecture. Obviously an incredibly low bar, but definitely iconic. The new one is an above average but very representative example of 2010s architecture. Not nearly as iconic.
it has a lot of very subtle architectural themes that are easy to overlook when it's seen from far away as just a box, you have to look closely to see how interesting it actually is
Two giant middle fingers from humanity to the gods.
Someone had to build a few giant imposing rectangles, though.
I worked in the towers years ago. The windows were only 20 inches wide, and set in the very deep outer columns. So unless you went upstairs to the Windows on The World, which had larger spaces between the columns, the view wasn't very panoramic. But still impressive. I do remember the Battery Park City area before it was all built up. Huge amount of space, and a lot of the fill they used came from the WTC excavations. Someone even planted a field of wheat there one summer as some kind of project. There were also some big parking lots before all the development really took off. I remember taking my car in once in a while on a Friday, and paying $6.00 to park.
This photo is so stunning.
There was a field of wheat nearby, too, back then
Beautiful art piece
Those must've been quite impressive to see in person, given that nothing else apart from the sears tower compared in scale.
I've been to both. While the Sears Tower was taller, the World Trade was a city onto itself. The lobby of of the twin towers and surrounding area were packed with people as there were hundreds of companies located there. I've also been to the new One World Trade and it is amazing but at the time I went was largely empty.
They really were great looking modern marvels.
Apparently once they were completed, they weren’t modern and liked. Not sure how true that is, but was part of a 9/11 YouTube video I watched (about the guy who designed the towers).
If you haven’t, watch Leaning Out - it’s about Leslie Robertson, the design engineer for the towers. I saw either this video or one like it in high school and it inspired me to become an engineer. Mr. Robertson’s design is the reason the towers stood so long before collapsing, allowing tens of thousands of people to escape. But he was always haunted by the ones who never made it out.
Yeah a lot of New Yorkers didn’t like them. But I’ve always thought they were beautiful and wish I could’ve seen them. And tbh they are nothing compared to shit buildings they are building in NYC now
I went up on them in 1999 at 12. I ate fries in a restaurant on one of the top floors. I don't know why I remember this detail specifically, but it was with a 2-pronged red fork. I distinctly remember how insanely fast the elevators were (my ears popped). It was a cool experience. Somewhere in my parents' house there's an extra-wide photograph of me holding my arms all the way out to the sides on the observation deck with the bay behind me, and then on the back of that, the same idea (wide arms) from the bay with the WTC behind me. I often wonder what the world would be like if 9/11/01 never happened. The day trust and peace died together.
I went at 9 sometime in April 2001. Don’t really remember much. It was a cloudy day so no view. Ate at the Sbarro on top.
It's honestly just recency bias. People just seem to love old architecture and hate new architecture (broadly).
Man. Next time we do this whole monolithic tower thing.... let's leave the water view full on. I always like the look of em. But damn. It looked even awesomer
Wonder why the same floors are lights off.
The identical zones of darkness are mechanical floors. They mostly just hold equipment needed to keep the towers running, so no big lights needed.
I’d wonder if somewhere on both of those floors is a server center or mechanical for the buildings and hence not for business use?
The antenna on the North Tower was but a sprouting back then.
They look Majestic!!
Magneficent
Also you can see the west side highway in front of the towers which was later demo’d in favor of a street level avenue.
We're in the BAD timeline. Something broke here and we're all stuck in this shitfucked version of Earth. While our alternate reality selves are all probably doing MUCH better in life, with less war and hate towards one another.
Really all it took is for Gore to win in 2000. Everything hinged on that -- the Clinton administration was tracking Bin Laden, and the Bush administration ignored the warnings. A Gore presidency is a presidency focused on environmental issues. At exactly the moment when we needed to be really starting to *work* to reduce the impacts of climate change. If 9/11 *does* happen, a Gore presidency doesn't respond with war in an unrelated country. I also don't see the USA PATRIOT act being passed. I don't see "you're with authority or you're against America" gaining such a firm foothold. I sure don't see Trump. And it all came about because the supreme court ordered Florida to stop counting ballots in Florida. With all the noise about 2020 being a stolen election --- 2000 arguably actually *was*. And it changed history for the worse, forever.
For some reason a lot of people don't know the following; President Clinton passed up on taking Bin Laden out several times because of collateral damage so Gore probably would too. In fact Clinton was down in Australia talking about those times he didn't authorize the hits just hours before the 9/11 attacks began. President Clinton had already signed into law that the U.S. would carry out a policy of regime change in Iraq. In fact Clinton had already started bombing Iraq in 1998. The so called "Monica's War". Senator Hillary Clinton voted for war in Iraq and President Clinton's law was used as legal justification of the war. Another fact a lot of people on here don't know; Saddam Hussein actually wanted the world to think he had WMD. He fooled everyone into thinking so because he figured that Iran was a bigger threat than the United States. He wanted them to think he had chemical/biological weapons to deter them from war. During the first Gulf War Bush Sr. decided not to go to Baghdad and remove Saddam so Saddam thought the U.S. lacked resolve. We know all of this as a matter of fact because Saddam himself admitted it in his final interviews before the Iraqis hung him. Another tidbit; There was an informer named "Curveball" that led western intelligence services to believe Saddam had WMD. His real name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان الجنابي. His lies about his credentials and knowledge of Saddam's weapons programs matched up with what Saddam was leading the world to believe so "Curveball" reinforced the myth. He did this because he wanted to get asylum in Europe. He currently lives in Germany a free man. We know all of this because he admitted it in 2011. I say all of this because both Democrats and Republicans wanted war in Iraq. In fact so did the American people. A slim majority of them supported an invasion of Iraq 7 months before 9/11 even happened and the overwhelming majority supported the war even after it had begun.
2000 was absolutely a stolen election, and all that went away when 9/11 happened. in early 2004 they got a proper count and found that, gore, had indeed won, worse was in 2006 they discovered the diebold voting machines had been counting Kerry votes for Bush due to a "technical glitch" Basically Bush was never truly elected. He was appointed. Nothing came of it because the damage was done and the Bush Family had sway. At this point we cant even be sure the elections are even being counted properly anymore. Trump's actions during his presidency benefited the right people at the end of the day, Biden has yet to walk back the worst parts of that presidency as Obama failed to walk back Bush' legacy and even extended it. Post 2000 has been a slow consolidation of power and wealth by the richest members of society to our detriment. People born after 2000 have no idea what we lost.
Shut up about timelines!!
This is an excellent picture
Stunning!
Reminds me of that tragedy
I walked through blood and bones trying to find my brother
What a beautiful shot..