INSTRUCTIONS AND PROPHECIES OF THE Blessed MOTHER ALIPIA GOLOSEEVSKY, Kyiv...
The Twin Towers: America's History, Pride and Tragedy
Buildings, like people, have something in common. Some live simple and invisible to most lives and, dying, remain in the memory of only their closest relatives. Others are in plain sight, admired or hated; at least many people know them. Dying, they remain a part of history, living in the minds of millions, even after leaving for eternity, influencing the living.
It was the second option that fate chose for the famous skyscrapers, the twin towers in New York. Blown up as a result of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, these buildings seem to continue to exist: everyone knows them, they are remembered, they continue to be replicated in thousands of photographs. They, in the end, in an elusive way still influence the life of a huge metropolis, and the United States as a whole.
Construction of the Twin Towers
Easy to build, hard to negotiate. Any building in the world, even a country house, is not born on construction site but in the minds of its creators. The World Trade Center in New York was no exception, the architectural and visual dominant of which were two skyscrapers, immediately called towers: North and South.
The idea of building a grandiose complex was born in the USA during World War II. By 1944, it became clear that as a result of it, only one state remained in the Western world, which managed not only to maintain its economic power, but to significantly strengthen it, especially against the background of the destroyed Europe and Japan. America became this state. It did not take much intelligence to understand the simple truth: in the coming decades, the country will become a superpower and develop rapidly. And she will need a large financial and commercial complex.
But it took a long time before the idea began to turn into reality. There were two main reasons.
The first is an inflamed arms race, cold war requiring huge financial investments.
The second is the clash of economic interests of several influential US groups, as well as two states, New Jersey and New York. In addition, the construction of the Center assumed the emergence of new skyscrapers, exceeding the height of the Empire State Building, the pride of the city, tallest building peace. The financial groups that controlled this building were not at all eager for the emergence of a formidable competitor.
And only by the beginning of the 60s all commercial, fashion and financial questions managed to shake it off. Not the last role in this was played by the Rockefeller brothers, David and Nelson. Using their influence, connections and money, the brothers began building the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
The entire complex, including the twin towers, was designed by several powerful design companies, but Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese-American, was chosen as the lead architect, the father of the project.
Yamasaki, before starting work on this project, performed several serious works in different cities USA, although he was not among the most venerable professionals in the country. An adherent of Gothic modernism, strongly influenced by the architecture of Le Corbusier, the Japanese turned his attention to the small old twin towers in the Italian town of San Gimignano, taking them as a model for his task.
And the task of the master was simple: to make something where there would be 5 times more office space than in the Empire State Building. After going through a few options, Yamasaki came to the final one: two slender towers with a square section, shaped like parallelepipeds.
The entire construction process can be divided into the following stages:
- design: 1962 - 1965;
- clearing and preparation of the area for construction - from March to August 1966;
- August 1966 - the beginning of earthworks, excavation for the base of the towers;
- installation of the last bearing element of buildings - December 1970 (North tower), July 1971 (South tower);
- the grand opening of the complex - April 4, 1974.
At the end of the construction, the towers turned out to be the tallest buildings in the world, each with 110 floors. The upper mark of the South was 415 meters, the North was 2 meters higher, in addition, it was decorated with an antenna with a mark of 526.3 meters.
Among other things, the appearance of towers gave rise to a real skyscraper race that began in the world. Running a little ahead, we can say that on the site of the fallen "candles" the Americans built a new World Trade Center, which is crowned by the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. However, now it is only the fourth in a cohort of giant buildings.
The unusual face of the Twin Towers
Continuing the analogy we started, we can say that, like people, outstanding buildings also have their own records and unique life events. There are also Yamasaki towers. Here is some of them:
- During the construction of buildings, deep 20-meter pits were dug to get to the “root” rock. The earth from the excavations was used for an artificial embankment, on which several buildings of the World Financial Center were subsequently built.
- The towers are based on hundreds of large and small steel pipes, creating a special frame that is resistant to wind and seismic vibrations.
- The facade of buildings is replete with a huge number of narrow windows with a width of only 56 cm. Yamasaki suffered from a fear of heights, and designed the windows so that any person, approaching the windowsill, could easily rest against the slopes of the window opening, which would give him a special sense of reliability.
- Each of the towers had 103 elevators, 6 of which were freight. Some of the passenger elevators were high-speed, some were ordinary. To move from the first to the second, the platforms on the 44th and 78th floors were used.
- Immediately after the towers were erected, they received derogatory criticism from the world's leading architects. The residents of the city did not like the buildings very much either. But gradually they got used to them and even began to be proud of them. Approximately the same fate was at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
- The first attempt to destroy the buildings was made in 1993. Then, in the garage of the North Tower, underground, they blew up a truck with more than half a ton of explosives.
In the end, the terrorists managed to blow up unusual buildings. But, having destroyed them, did they destroy the very idea, the human desire to conquer, to create something unusual? After all, it is in the very nature of man.
And, perhaps, the impudent Frenchman Philippe Petit said this very well, who in August 1974 managed to walk 8 times in a row (!) On a rope stretched between two towers, while dancing and even lying down: “Lying on the rope, I saw very close above a seagull. And I was reminded of the myth of Prometheus. Here, at this height, I invaded her space, proving that a person can be compared with a bird ... "
2 WTC: 415 m.
3 WTC: 73.7 m.
4 and 5 WTC: 36 m.
6 WTC: 32 m.
7 WTC: 186 m.
2 WTC: 411 m.
3 WTC: 22 floors
WTC 4 and 5: 9 floors
6 WTC: 8 floors
7 WTC: 47 floors
4, 5, and 6 WTC: 50,000 m2
7 WTC: 170,000 m2
Emery Roth and Sons
world trade center(English) World Trade Center), abbr. The WTC is a complex of seven buildings designed by Minoru Yamasaki, an American architect of Japanese origin, and officially opened on April 4, 1973 in New York (USA). The architectural dominant of the complex were two towers, each with 110 floors - North (417 m high, and taking into account the antenna installed on the roof - 526.3 m) and South (415 m high). On September 11, 2001, the WTC complex was destroyed in a terrorist attack. For some time after the construction was completed, the towers were the tallest skyscrapers in the world (before that, the tallest building was the Empire State Building, which, after the destruction of the World Trade Center, again became the tallest building in New York). Sometimes these towers are called "a symbol of US world domination."
History and construction
View of the window of one of the twin towers. It can be seen that the entire outer skin consists of huge steel bars.
Minoru Yamasaki conceived the project of the World Trade Center in 1962, in January 1964, the architect, commissioned by the Port Authority, created drawings of buildings, a little later in the same year he submitted a 1:130 full-size layout for discussion, and two years later (5 August 1966) powerful excavators began to dig a pit.
Prior to the twins, skyscrapers in New York were built on natural stone foundations. Manhattan is really made of stone, it has stone, granite under a layer of earth, you can see it when you watch the construction of new houses: pits are not dug out here, but cut down, gnawed out by the steel teeth of cutting hammers.
The first problem the engineers faced was that there was no footstool where the twins were supposed to stand. Instead, they found artificial, alluvial soil that used to "belong" to the Hudson River. This soil was a large amount of artificial earth, mixed with layers of cobblestone, sand, gravel, pebbles, even old ships came across in artificial soil. The builders were getting desperate: additional difficulties, additional costs, additional concrete.
This was not the only problem that lay in wait for the architect and engineers. The next problem that befell them was 164 large and small, narrow and wide buildings, most often stone, which stood on the site of the future World Trade Center and had to be demolished. It was not difficult to demolish them, but the problem still remained after that. At the same time, it was much more difficult to leave intact, and then to transfer the saturated and complex system underground utilities, fire alarm system, stranded telephone and electrical cables, gas, thermal, pneumatic and water pipes, do not interfere with the nearby expressway and preserve numerous pedestrian roads and crossings.
Another problem turned out to be the underground railroad station, from here starting an underwater route to New Jersey, which takes hundreds of thousands of people to and from work. If the road were closed, New York and the entire United States would face inevitable economic problems. The subway transported people until a new underground station was built in the lower tier of the complex.
This is not to say that the work of the builders was easy. That only cost 1.2 million cubic meters. yards of earth that had to be dug up and hauled away. Instead, the so-called Plaza was created under the twins - an underground space where numerous restaurants and banks, travel agencies, airline ticket offices, shops, a new New Jersey road station, much better than the old one, warehouses, technical workshops for serving the twins and an underground garage are located. for two thousand cars.
Faced with the challenge of constructing a building of unprecedented height, the engineers adopted a progressive structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns, with storey trusses expanding towards the center. On the outer surface of each four sides 61 steel beams ran along the entire height of the building, between which cables were also stretched along the entire height. The columns, finished in silver aluminum alloy, were 476.25mm wide and set just 558.8mm apart, making the towers look like they had no windows at all from afar. The load-bearing walls were assembled from prefabricated steel blocks, each weighing 22 tons, 36 feet high (4 floors high), 10 feet wide. Two hundred thousand tons in total weighed the steel laid in Gemini.
As the twins grew, installers laid floors from special, pre-prepared corrugated steel and durable concrete slabs. The ceilings were fastened to the outer bearing walls from the outside and to the inside, the only steel columns in the twins with a purely useful feature- they were erected for fixing internal elevators.
The elevator system used in the buildings was also unique. The twin towers were the first ultra-tall buildings designed without masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure generated by the high speed elevators could bend the standard shafts, the engineers developed a solution using a "dry wall" system anchored in a reinforced steel base. Elevators with a standard configuration serving 110 floors could need half the area of the lower rooms for the location of the shafts. Otis Elevators have developed a fast and compact system, in which passengers had to take turns in "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of shafts. In total, the World Trade Center complex had 239 elevators and 71 escalators, which were controlled by a computer center from the Port Authority. Each elevator with a carrying capacity of 4536 kilograms could lift 55 people at a lifting speed of about 8.5 meters per second.
The laying of the foundation in the excavated pit began with the north tower in August 1968, including by the forces of Italian workers who started work at 8 am and worked until 3:30 pm with a 40-minute lunch break at the normal rate, and after half past four worked at a double rate: the foreman received $ 40 per hour or, respectively, $ 80 per hour of work in the evening, and overtime was the rule, not the exception. Construction proceeded quickly, despite the ongoing difficulties with financing. New York budget 1965-1970 was $6 billion. To raise money to invest in the construction of the Trade Center, the city issued bonds with a guarantee of their redemption. But in 1970, New York suffered a financial crisis. The maturity date for the bonds has also arrived. The building almost froze. To save the situation, it was necessary to introduce new, higher taxes in the field of entrepreneurship. Another source of money was found: the future premises of the Twins began to be rented out for offices. And they were expected to be huge - 100 thousand square meters. m. Of all the difficulties, it was finally possible to “get out”. The north tower was completed in 1971, the south tower in 1973. The grand opening of the World Trade Center took place on April 4, 1973.
The towers were square in cross section, with a side of 65 m. Each tower had 110 floors. The foundations of the structures went underground by 23 m. 200 thousand tons of rolled steel were spent on the frames of the buildings, and the cables of the electrical networks, with a total capacity of 80,000 kilowatts, stretched for 3 thousand miles - half the distance from New York to London, across the Atlantic. The structure of the buildings was simple and reasonable. The facades are made in the form of steel frames and modular aluminum sections mounted on them with dimensions of 3.5 × 10 m, manufactured by the factory stamping method. This design is earthquake-resistant and able to withstand wind pressure, which is very strong at high altitude. According to the architects, each tower of the World Trade Center could withstand collisions with several aircraft, but on September 11, 2001, both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed to the ground.
Fire February 13, 1975
On February 13, 1975, three fire alarms sounded on the 11th floor of the North Tower. The fire spread through the central empty pipes to the 9th and 14th floors due to the ignition of telephone wires in a shaft located vertically between the floors. Those areas where the fire penetrated through the wires were extinguished almost immediately, the source of ignition was dealt with in a few hours. Most of the damage occurred on the 11th floor, where a fire started in an office filled with paper, typewriter fluid and other office equipment. The fire-fighting treatment of the steel against melting saved the shell itself, and no structural damage was caused to the tower. In second place in terms of damage were the lower floors, which suffered not so much from fire as from fire foam. At that time, the World Trade Center did not have a fire extinguishing system.
Terrorist attack on February 26, 1993
Destruction in the basement
On February 26, 1993, at 12:17 p.m., a truck loaded with 680 kg of explosives driven by Ramzi Youzef drove into the World Trade Center grounds. It exploded in the underground garage of the North Tower. As a result, a hole with a diameter of 30 m was made through 5 underground floors by a blast wave, causing maximum damage to levels B1 and B2 in their entire history and significant damage to level B3. Six people were killed (including during an exit stampede) and another 50,000 workers and visitors could not breathe due to lack of oxygen on the 110 floors of the towers. Many people inside the North Tower had to climb down dark stairs, some taking more than two hours.
Youzef fled to Pakistan shortly after the bombing but was arrested in Islamabad in February 1995 and extradited to the US for trial. Sheikh Omar Abdel Raman was charged in 1996 with involvement in the bombing and other conspiracies. Yousef and Ayd Izmoil were sentenced to life in prison in 1997 for their involvement in the bombing. Four more were also sentenced for participation in the explosion in May 1994. According to the court, the goal of the conspirators was the complete destabilization of the North Tower, followed by the South - that is, the complete destruction of both towers.
After the explosion, it was necessary to restore the affected floors, especially because they carried the structural load and were supporting. The wall of liquid cement was in danger after the explosion, and the metal plates that prevented the pressure of the Hudson's water from the other side were also lost. Cooling plant on sublevel B5, which supplied air to the entire World Trade Center complex, was disabled.
After the attack, the port authorities installed photoluminescent signs on the walls. The fire alarm system had to be completely replaced due to the original system's wiring and alarm system failing. In memory of the victims, a reflecting pond was created with the names of those killed in the explosion. As a result of the September 11 attacks, the memorial was destroyed. A new memorial common to the victims of the explosion and terrorist attack will appear in a new complex being built on the site of the former World Trade Center.
Destruction September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and deliberately collided with the North Tower at 08:46 (from the north facade, between the 93rd and 99th floors). Seventeen minutes later, a second group of terrorists crashed the same hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 (United Airlines Flight 175) into the South Tower (floors 77-85). Due to the destruction caused by the aircraft's body to the North Tower, all exits from the building above the collision site were completely blocked, as a result of which 1,344 people were trapped. The impact of the second aircraft, unlike the first, fell closer to the corner of the skyscraper, and one stairwell remained intact. However, few people managed to freely descend it before the collapse of the building. But still, despite the fact that the plane's impact on the South Tower fell lower, here they were blocked between floors or killed less than 700 people at once - much less than in the North. At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed due to a fire that damaged the steel members of the structure, already weakened by the collision with the aircraft. The north tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. after a fire that lasted 102 minutes.
At 17:20 on September 11, 2001, the eastern penthouse of the seventh building of the World Trade Center (WTC-7) collapsed, and at 17:21 the entire building collapsed due to the fact that spontaneous fires irreversibly destroyed its structure. The third building of the World Trade Center, the Marriott Hotel (WTC-3), was hit by the falling Twin Towers. The three remaining buildings in the complex were severely damaged by falling debris and were eventually demolished as they were beyond repair.
The Deutsche Bank building on the other side of Liberty Street, opposite the World Trade Center complex, was later deemed uninhabitable due to the high content of toxic compounds in the premises; Now the building has been demolished. Fiterman Hall of Manhattan Community College at 30 West Broadway is also scheduled for demolition due to extensive damage sustained during the attack.
Already after the attack, the media reported that tens of thousands of people could have been injured, since over 50,000 people could be in the complex during normal working hours. As a result of the 9/11 attacks, 2,752 death certificates were issued, including those issued to Felicia Dunn-Jones, whose death was registered only in May 2007; Dunn-Jones died five months after the attack due to a terrible lung condition caused by clouds of flying dust during the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Two more victims were later added to the official death toll: Sneha Anne Philip, a physician, who was last seen the day before the attack, and Leon Hayward, who died in 2008 of lymphoma caused by inhaling dust-laden air. raised by the collapse of the Twin Towers. The Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. investment bank, located on floors 101-105 of the World Trade Center, lost 658 employees - more than any other institution, even the Marsh and McLennan Companies, located directly below the bank premises on floors 93-101 (where the plane crashed terrorists) and lost 295 people. In third place in terms of human losses (175 people) is Aon Corporation. 343 New York City firefighters, 84 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey employees, including 37 Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) officers and 23 New York City Police Department officers, also died. Of all those people who were in the towers at the time of their collapse, only 20 people were recovered alive, including PAPD police officers Will Jimeno and John McLaughlin (the eighteenth and nineteenth survivors).
Effects
As a result, all seven buildings of the complex were destroyed: the three tallest buildings (North Tower, South Tower and WTC-7) collapsed, the Marriott Hotel was almost completely destroyed by the wreckage of WTC-1 and WTC-2, the other three buildings suffered such damage that they were deemed unsuitable for restoration and later demolished. Also, as a result of the collapse of the WTC-2, irreparable damage was caused to the 40-story building of Deutsche Bank, which is currently being dismantled.
A memorial complex was erected on the site of the collapsed twin towers.
Buildings of the new complex
- Freedom Tower (Tower 1 )
- 200 Greenwich Street (Tower 2 )
- 175 Greenwich Street (Tower 3 )
- 150 Greenwich Street (Tower 4 )
- 130 Liberty Street (Tower 5 )
- World Trade Center transportation hub
Notes
- Builders: WTC towers collapsed due to "pancake effect"
- 9/11 Commission Report. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. archived
- Dwyer, Jim, Lipton, Eric et al. 102 Minutes: Last Words at the Trade Center; Fighting to Live as the Towers Die, The New York Times(May 26, 2002). Archived from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved May 23, 2008.
- NIST NCSTAR 1-1 (2005), p. 34; pp. 45-46
- FEMA 403 - World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Chapter. 5, section 5.5.4 (PDF). Archived from the original on August 27, 2011. Retrieved January 30, 2011.
- Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 - Draft for Public Comment xxxii. NIST (August 2008). Archived from the original on August 27, 2011.
- World Trade Center Building Performance Study. FEMA (May 2002). archived
- World Trade Center Building Performance Study - Bankers Trust Building. FEMA (May 2002). Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2007.
- The Deutsche Bank Building at 130 Liberty Street Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2007.
- Fiterman Hall - Project Updates. Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
- DePalma, Anthony. For the First Time, New York Links a Death to 9/11 Dust, The New York Times(May 24, 2007).
- Official 9/11 Death Toll Climbs By One , CBS News(July 10, 2008). Retrieved 29 August 2010.
- Foderaro, Lisa W.. 9/11"s Litany of Loss, Joined by Another Name (September 11, 2009). Retrieved August 29, 2010.
- Siegel, Aaron. Industry honors fallen on 9/11 anniversary , investmentnews(September 11, 2007). Retrieved May 20, 2008.
- Lung Ailments May Force 500 Firefighters Off Job , The New York Times(September 10, 2002). Retrieved May 23, 2008.
- Post-9/11 report recommends police, fire response changes (August 19, 2002). Retrieved May 23, 2008.
- Police back on day-to-day beat after 9/11 nightmare, CNN(July 21, 2002). Retrieved May 23, 2008.
- Oliver Stone premiered in New York Radio Liberty(August 07, 2006). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
see also
- World Trade Center Memorial
- List of world trade centers List of world trade centers )
Links
- Official site (English)
- Genis, Alexander. September 11th: Images of Tragedy (about the book: David Friend, Watching the World Change), Radio Liberty(September 13, 2006). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
- Genis, Alexander. September 11th: Gemini Day Radio Liberty(September 08, 2008). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
- Kopeikin, Anatoly. I keep looking somewhere in the sky, as if looking for an answer, or an Amazing story, Russian thought(June 06-12, 2002). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
| Extra tall buildings (see also the list of buildings over 100 floors) | |
|---|---|
| built | |
| In the process construction |
23 Marina 175 Greenwich Street Ahmed Abdul Rahim Al Attar Tower Al Hamra Tower Al Yaquob Tower APIIC Tower Central Market Project China 117 Tower DAMAC Heights Diamond Tower Gift D1 Tower Dubai Towers Doha Elite Residence Emirates Park Towers Faros del Panamá |
Few people know that during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, not only the famous New York Twin Towers were destroyed. The explosions affected a huge territory. Several more skyscrapers that were part of the World Trade Center complex and the Marriott Hotel collapsed. The place where towers and other buildings used to rise was nicknamed "zero mark" by the townspeople. Despite the fact that all of America was hard pressed by the September attack, work on the restoration of this section began already in 2001. To date, new majestic structures have appeared on the site of the destroyed Trade Center.
Freedom Tower
One of the initial tasks set by the New York City administration for engineers and city planners was the creation of a new building for the World Trade Center. In the course of long disputes, Daniel Libeskind's project was chosen from all the options. The architect proposed to place the offices of the World Trade Center in a mirrored skyscraper topped with a thin spire. Construction began only in 2006, and in 2014 the tower was inaugurated. Today, the Freedom Tower is the tallest building in America. Its height is 541 meters or 1776 feet (as conceived by the architect, the number 1776 should symbolize the year the US Declaration of Independence was signed).
In the spring of 2016, a new Oculus transport hub was opened in front of the Freedom Tower, connecting 11 metro lines, an overground railway station and a ferry crossing. As conceived by the architect Santiago Calatrava, the station building resembles a dove taking off, spreading its wings.
In the center of the structure is a huge oval hall - "Oculus", which gave the name to the whole structure. There are steel piles around the circumference of the hall, converging at a height of 120 meters. The majestic building has already been called the most expensive metro station in the world. According to experts, over 250,000 people will pass through the Oculus every day.
Memorial and Museum 9/11
Discussions on the construction of a commemorative memorial began in the fall of 2001. A special commission studied thousands of proposed projects. By the beginning of 2004, architect Michael Arad was declared the winner of the competition. The memorial, named "Reflecting Absence", consists of two huge square pools paved with granite. Pools are equipped strictly on those places where the foundations of the destroyed towers were located. The names of all 2977 dead are engraved on the outer granite walls, and water flows endlessly along the inner walls, flowing into square holes in the center. The memorial is surrounded by white oaks, and the famous “survivor tree” grows here - a pear tree that was found under the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Next to the memorial is a small bright building - the 9/11 Museum. Here you can see fragments of structures and cars destroyed by the explosion, personal belongings of the victims, photographs from the scene of the tragedy. The remains of still unidentified victims are stored in the same building.
The terrible tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001 claimed the lives of a huge number of people. 2973 people died, and this, you see, is a significant figure.
It was preceded by the capture of four aircraft bound for California and the eastern United States. The tanks of the aircraft were full, so we can say that they turned into guided missiles.
At 8:45, one of the planes, a Boeing 767, crashed into the North Tower. 92 on board (11 crew members, 5 terrorists and 76 passengers). The plane crashed into the gap between the 93rd and 99th floors. The fuel that flared up in the tank rushed down in a column of fire, killing even those people who were in the foyer. At 10:29 a.m., the burning building collapsed, burying a huge number of people with it. The number of the plane that crashed into the twin towers is AA11.
At 09:03, a plane also crashed into the South Tower, it was the second Boeing 767. The blow fell on the gap between the 77th and 81st floors. There were 65 people on board the plane (5 terrorists, 9 crew members and 54 passengers). At 9:59 local time, the burning building collapsed. The aircraft number is UA175.
There were two more planes. One of them struck the Pentagon at 9:40. 184 people died. And the last fell in the forest of Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh. It was possible to look at the records from the so-called "black box". It became clear that the terrorists dived down when the resisting passengers tried to break into the cockpit. There were 44 people on board.
According to journalists, some passengers were able to call their relatives from the hijacked planes. People reported about terrorists: there were 4 people on one board, 5 on the others. It is believed that these data were deliberately fabricated by the FBI, because there was one call that caused great distrust. The mother's son called and when she picked up the phone, he said: "Mom, it's me, John Smith." Agree, it is unlikely that he would actually start a conversation with the introduction of his last name.
None of those on board survived. 274 people died on board the planes (terrorists are not counted), 2602 people in New York (both on the ground and in the towers), 125 people in the Pentagon.
It wasn't just the twin towers that suffered. Another five buildings were either destroyed or badly damaged. A total of 25 buildings were damaged and 7 had to be demolished.
What are the consequences of this terrible tragedy? Two skyscrapers and an adjacent wing of the Pentagon were destroyed. About three thousand people died. The New York Stock Exchange has suspended its work for two days. The area adjacent to the site of the tragedy was completely strewn with ashes. The president declared the attack served the US with Afghanistan and then with Iraq.
The tragedy received national status, and the news of it flew through the whole world in a matter of seconds. No wonder the terrorists chose these buildings, because the twin towers were the pride of the United States.
The towers were built in the 60s, at which time the prestige of America was shaken. It was decided to build something gigantic, grandiose, stunning in order to restore people's optimism and faith in themselves and the future. No one imagined that the "project of the century" would turn into the main "tragedy of the century."
Original taken from mgsupgs in History of the Twin Towers
Original taken from igornasa
to the World Trade Center - from foundation to Ground Zero
Story WTC (World Trade Center) started in 1946.
It was the first post-war year - Europe lay in ruins, Japan was moving away from the consequences of the atomic bombing, China was in anticipation civil war. The only country that managed with little blood, with a mighty blow, were the USA - for a very short time the world became Pax Americana.
Pax americana and sovietica
Better to be dead than red(anti-communist slogan)
We will bury you
(N.S. Khrushchev)
The dollar was recognized as an international means of payment, the Marshall Plan began to be implemented, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank and, of course, the UN were created.
The UN headquarters is located in cosmopolitan New York.
In 1946, the New York city fathers, anticipating the heyday of international trade in the post-war world, proposed to build a "World Trade Center" in Lower Manhattan.
The idea turned out to be premature. Soviet Union, having the strongest land army, acquired atomic bomb. Over Europe, the Soviets lowered the iron curtain, while in Asia, having made friends forever with China, they unleashed the Korean War.
world out pax americana turned into Pax americana et sovietica (the American world and the Soviet world)
The Cold War was not very conducive to the flourishing of international trade - the Americans returned to the idea of building the World Trade Center only in the late fifties. The word "worldwide" now referred exclusively to the capitalist world.
The center was supposed to be built in Lower Manhattan, which was in deep crisis. After 1929, not a single new skyscraper was built here, and the area itself gradually turned into a ghost town. The Rockefeller brothers, David and Nelson, managed to stop this process.
Rockefellers. "Baron", philanthropist, politician, banker
All major modern states acquired in the most dishonorable way"Capitalist Sharks. Biography of American Millionaires" ...
As an intelligent person, he will understand that a part is less than the whole, and will give me this part for fear of losing everything.
(Golden calf)
The brothers belonged to not the last dynasty in the capitalist world - their grandfather was the same Robber Baron (robber baron) John Rockefeller Sr., who is Standard Oil, and his father is a philanthropist John Rockefeller Jr.(Rockefeller Center).
John Rockefeller Sr.
John Rockefeller Jr. and his sons - David, Nelson, Winthrop, Lawrence and John Rockefeller III, awaiting the arrival of the coffin with the body of John Rockefeller Sr. (1937)
If the founder of the dynasty, the first "dollar" billionaire in the world, forever remained the stigma of a robber baron, then his heirs became famous as philanthropists and politicians- Money doesn't smell.
The most notable figures of the five brothers were Nelson and David.
Save Lower Manhattan!
WTC skyscrapers were going to be named "Nelson" and "David"(New York folklore)
Nelson Rockefeller, vice president in the administration of Gerald Ford, served 14 years as Governor of New York State.
David Rockefeller since 1961 he has been president of the Chase Manhattan Bank.
It was with the construction of the 60-story skyscraper Chase Manhattan Bank that the revival of Lower Manhattan as a business center began.
In 1960, the "Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association", led by David Rockefeller, developed a plan to create World Trade Center- a complex of office buildings and hotels. With the support of New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the plan began to materialize.
Such a grandiose project could only be mastered by Port Authority- a powerful organization responsible for the infrastructure inside the ring with a radius of 40 km and the center - the Statue of Liberty.
Through hardship to the stars
The construction of the World Trade Center, of course, could not do without conflicts. The interests of the two states (New York and New Jersey), the city of New York, the owners of the Empire State Building and the organization Port Authority. The parties had to compromise, make concessions and receive change.Almost everyone was reconciled by the transfer of the WTC site from the east coast of Manhattan (East River) to the west (Hudson). At the same time, the WTC was planned to be built just above the railway tunnels connecting Manhattan with the New Jersey coast.
1 - original location for WTC, 2 - WTC
As a result, the state of New Jersey received railroad upgrades, and the state of New York and the Port Authority profited from the operation of the terminal of this road, which was planned to be built under the World Trade Center.
Contradictions were resolved in the corridors of power, only the last battle took place on the square - with the owners of small shops located on the site of the future World Trade Center. They were mostly electronics stores - that's what the place was called Radio Row(Radio series).
Businessmen, behind whom loomed the owners of the Empire State Building, who did not want the appearance of such a competitor, staged demonstrations and tried to act through the courts.
All their efforts were in vain - on March 21, 1966, the first of the red-brick buildings of Radio Row was demolished.
What did they plan to build under such a loud name - the World Center?
Back in 1962, a little-known architect from Detroit, a 49-year-old Japanese American, won a competition in which architects of the first rank participated. Minoru Yamasaki.
Quiet Japanese American
The biography of Minoru Yamasaki is a classic illustration of American success.
Born in Seattle to Japanese immigrants (his father worked in a local shoe factory and his mother was a pianist), he was exposed early to the racism then so prevalent in those parts. To earn money for his college education, he traveled to Alaska, where he worked 14-hour days on fishing boats.
Minoru Yamasaki shows the place under the World Trade Center on the layout of Lower Manhattan
two one hundred and ten
Yamasaki was given the modest task of designing a building with five times the office space of the Empire State Building. Having gone through dozens of options - a lone skyscraper with 150 floors, four skyscrapers, a complex of low buildings and others, the architect settled on two identical skyscrapers-parallelepipeds with a square section.
Italian influence is evident in the works of the American architect of Japanese origin.
The shape and arrangement of skyscrapers - like the towers of the medieval Italian city of San Gimignano
Twin towers of San Gimignano
Twin Towers of the World Trade Center
Gothic arches - like the Doge's Palace in Venice
Doge's Palace
World Trade Center Plaza
The original skyscrapers had 80 floors, making them shorter than the Empire State Building.
Guy Tozzoli, in charge of the project from the organization Port Authority, stated:
Pit, the president is going to put a man on the moon. I want our skyscrapers to be the tallest in the world
Yamasaki added 30 floors each. Now the 110-story skyscrapers have bypassed the Empire State Building... and started their second high-altitude race. As is known, first high-altitude race completed in 1931, and the winner, the Empire State Building, remained the tallest building in the world for 40 years. The second race is still going on:
World Trade Center (1973)
Sears Tower (1974)
Petronas Towers (1998)
Taipei 101 (2004)
Shanghai World Financial Center (2008)
New WTC-1 (2013, under construction)
Burj Khalifa (2010)
On August 6, 1966, twenty years after the concept of the complex was born, the construction of the World Trade Center began.
Construction of the century
We built and built and finally builtThe construction of a skyscraper is an extraordinary task in itself, but the construction of the World Trade Center was unprecedented in scale and complexity.
The problems started from the foundation. The skyscraper must stand on bedrock(hard rock). It turned out to be more than 20 meters before her in the place chosen for the Center. Just digging was dangerous because of the proximity of ocean waters, so before digging began, an underground "wall" was built around the entire perimeter of the future construction site. The structure was named bathtub (trough).
Bathtub (indicated by arrows). Tunnels: 1 - in New Jersey, 2 - from New Jersey
And what was to be done with so much excavated land? New York remembered its Dutch roots - the inhabitants of the Netherlands (Lower Lands) were famous for their ability to win space from the sea. The Dutch colonists brought this know-how to the New World, and the British took advantage of their knowledge - over the centuries of colonization, the outlines of Manhattan have changed a lot.
These changes are demonstrated by a photograph from the 30s - elevated metro line runs along the border New Amsterdam
1 - a place under the World Trade Center, 2 - the area of the future embankment
WTC towers and embankment under construction
Later, a residential complex was built on the embankment. Battery Park City and World Financial Center. The four squat skyscrapers of the Financial Center, similar to the Teletubbies, delight the eye with a variety of tops - an Egyptian pyramid, a Mayan pyramid, a dome and a mastaba
Blue dots - the outlines of Manhattan in the year of its "purchase" from the Indians (1626),
gray area - man-made areas.
Depths bathtub enough for seven underground floors, over which the construction of 110-story towers began.
Cranes ordered from Australia were used in the construction Kangaroo capable of self-growing
The unusual design of the WTC skyscrapers is demonstrated by a unique photograph, which, like an x-ray, shows the "skeleton" of the North Tower.
The weight of the skyscraper was carried by two groups of columns - the central and the outer.
Stairs and elevators were located in the center, and the space between the central and outer columns was intended for offices. This design gave future tenants the freedom to redevelop offices.
Typical skyscrapers of that time had facades made entirely of glass, while Twins had windows in the back, behind the columns.
At night, the windows were clearly visible.
during the day skyscrapers became blind monoliths
This is how skyscrapers looked at the end of construction, in 1970.
The last floor of the North Tower was built at the end of 1970, the South Tower - in the middle of 1971. The opening of the Center took place April 4, 1973.
The twins seemed to be the legs of a huge tuning fork upon completion of construction.
The opportunity to see them in full growth disappeared after the construction of the World Financial Center in 1988.
The cost of construction went over 1.5 billion dollars, 7.5 thousand people built the World Trade Center, 8 people died.
Perpendicular city
As is customary, the United States is divided into areas that are assigned postal codes ( zip code).
It is unusual to assign an index to a single building. In New York City, 44 skyscrapers are large enough to have their own zip code. For example, the Empire State Building zip code is 10118 , Chrysler Building - 10174 , Seagram Building - 10152 .
The WTC index was the numbers 10048 .
The World Trade Center was a real city - in the buildings of the complex on a weekday there were up to 50 thousand employees and from 50 to 100 thousand visitors. This made it the sixth most populous "city" in the state of New York.
The WTC is six buildings that fit in the Plaza (square) of 16 acres, and one building is outside the square.
1 WTC - North Tower
2 WTC - South Tower
3 WTC - Marriot Hotel
4 WTC - commodity exchange
5 WTC - Dean Witter Building
6 WTC - US Customs
7 WTC - Salomon Brothers Bank
Often the whole complex was simply called the Twins - the rest of the buildings faded next to the 110-story towers:
Height of the North Tower (without antenna) - 417 meters
The height of the South Tower is 415 meters
Antenna height - 104 meters
The delivery of people and goods was carried out by elevators - there were 103 of them in each tower (97 passenger and 6 freight). Express elevators stopped only on the 44th, 78th and top floors (the so-called skylobbies- heavenly vestibules). For intermediate floors, it was necessary to transfer to local elevators.
In the center of the Plaza was a fountain with a rotating sphere
Under the plaza there was a mall, below the mall there was an underground garage for 2000 cars. At the level of the seventh floor there was a railway tunnel.
Endure - fall in love
The initial reaction of New Yorkers and guests of the capital of the world to Yamasaki's creation was very cool:
The twins are the boxes that the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were delivered in.
(New York folklore)
The most ruthless critics were professionals:
Ada Huxtable
, architectural critic:
The towers are bare technology, the lobbies are tearful sentimentality, the impact on New York is pure fantasy... The twenty-two inch (56 cm) windows are so narrow that one of the marvelous possibilities afforded by high-rise buildings, the breathtaking view from above, is completely absent. ... Towers are great buildings, but they are not great architecture.
Paul Goldberger
, architectural critic:
It [Center] is big. It is larger than any building. He showed once again that a person can adapt to anything ... His influence on the city, whether it concerns the skyline, the downtown environment and real estate prices, cannot be overestimated. But the Center's buildings themselves are so boring and banal that they wouldn't even be worth building for a bank in Omaha.
In the end, the Twins repeated the fate of the Eiffel Tower - they got used to them, then they stopped noticing, then they began to be proud.
Filmed against the backdrop of the World Trade Center:
The Statue of Liberty
Church of St. Nicholas
If someone wanted to see Manhattan without the World Trade Center, he had to climb
to the upper floors of the Twins - the only place where they could not be seen.
It was possible to survey "the whole of New York"
- from the windows of the Windows on the World restaurant, located on the 106/107 floors of the North Tower
from the Observation Deck, located on the 107th floor of the South Tower
from the platform on the roof of the South Tower (110th floor)
The Gemini soon began to attract adventurers.
The "sky walk" of the French tightrope walker became a sensation.
Philippe Petit Big Show
When I see three oranges I have to juggle; when I see two towers I have to walk between them
(F. Petit)
At six o'clock on the evening of August 6, 1974, Philippe Petit, a self-taught tightrope walker, climbed onto the roof of the South Tower. He was not alone - several people participated in the "conspiracy". Pretending to be messengers, they carried the necessary equipment to the roofs of the towers - a steel rope, a collapsible pole, a bow and an arrow. It took all night to transfer and secure the rope.
At seven o'clock in the morning, Philippe Petit stepped onto a rickety "bridge" stretched at a height of 415 meters, one inch (2.5 cm) wide and 40 meters long.
Far below, people hurrying to work stopped and looked in disbelief at a small human figure strolling between giant towers at an unimaginable height.
The first ten viewers were soon joined by thousands. A few minutes after the "performance" began, the police arrived on the roof of the South Tower.
Sergeant Charles Daniels testifies:
When police officer Meyers and I went out on the roof, we found this "dancer" halfway up the tower - it would not be enough to call him just a tightrope walker. When he saw us, he smiled and started dancing. When he knelt down, we retreated, worried that our presence would affect his concentration. We called everyone to silence. The tightrope walker lay down on the rope, then sat down, dangling his legs - it was incredible ...
Standing up, he began to dance again, laughing and approaching us... When he approached the tower, we demanded that he get off the rope onto the roof, but he turned and walked back... He began to jump, completely tearing his legs off the rope We are all petrified...
Petit himself recalls:
In 45 minutes I made 8 transitions. During one of them, I lay down on a rope, looked into the sky and saw a seagull above me. I could see her - she had red eyes. I was reminded of the myth of Prometheus. The bird circled in the sky and looked at the alien intruding into its space - who I was here, at this height ...
When Petit returned to the roof, he was immediately arrested.
He was charged with many things: penetration into private territory, disobedience to the police, dangerous behavior for others, and even public speaking without permission.
Of course, later all charges were dropped, Philippe Petit was only obliged to speak to a children's audience in Central Park.
Philippe Petit was followed by representatives of other genres.
Brave heroes of very small stature
They just don't notice usDue to size difference
And so they forgive
Very small but brave...
If at Vladimir Mayakovsky the unemployed rushed off the Brooklyn Bridge, then one modern disadvantaged chose the World Trade Center. Not intending to take his own life, he wanted to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed.
He landed safely, becoming one of the forerunners BASE jumping (Building, Antenna, Span, Earth)- an extreme activity in which daredevils jump with a parachute from buildings, antennas, bridges and cliffs.
WTC won not only from above, but also from below.
George Willig, "man-fly", on May 26, 1977, climbed the South Tower, spending 3.5 hours on it. For violation public order he was fined $1.36 - a cent for every foot he covered.
Various performances were staged on the stage called the World Trade Center.
In 1995, the match for the title of world chess champion (according to the PCA) between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand was held here.
Such a platform could not be neglected by Hollywood. In the 1976 remake of King Kong, the final scene takes place not on the Empire State Building, but on the roof of the World Trade Center.
The film, as you know, does not end with a happy ending for King Kong - mortally wounded, he falls from the roof of the South Tower into the plaza of the complex.
First blood
On that day, a truck bomb exploded on the second floor of the underground garage under the North Tower.
Wards of Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Blind Sheikh) hoped that the North Tower would collapse on the South, but the Twins resisted.
6 people were killed, about a thousand were wounded. As a result of the explosion, the skyscrapers were de-energized, the elevators stopped, the warning system stopped working. The firemen's portable radios did not function well, and the 911 system was overloaded.
The foot evacuation by stairs took more than 4 hours. A small group of people were taken by helicopters from the South Tower, and one person even from the hard-to-reach roof of the North Tower.
Helipad on the roof of the North Tower; police helicopter
These operations have given people the false belief that rooftop helicopter rescues are part of the rescue plans.
The attack demonstrated the poor readiness of the World Trade Center for such catastrophic events and forced them to take action.
Alas, as the events of 2001 showed, these measures turned out to be half-measures.
11 September
But the wind blew and you're goneWho do you want to surprise...
The first ramming occurred at 8:46 am, the second tower collapsed at 10:28 am.
The World Trade Center, which took seven years to build and stood for thirty years, was destroyed in 102 minutes.
Completely destroyed
1 - 1 WTC
2 - 2 WTC
3 - 7 WTC
4 - North Bridge
5 - Church of St. Nicholas
Partially collapsed
6 - Marriot Hotel
7 - 4 WTC
8 - 5 WTC
9 - 6 WTC
Significantly damaged
10 - building at 30 West Broadway
11 - Verizon Telephone Company Building
12 - 3 World Financial Center
13 - Winter Garden
14 - building at 90 West Street
15 - Bankers Trust building
Facade damaged
16 - One Liberty Plaza
17 - building at 22 Cortlandt Street
18 - Millennium Hilton Hotel
19-Federal Office Building
20 - 2 World Financial Center
21 - 1 World Financial Center
The next day
When the ruins of the World Trade Center were removed, a practically intact wall emerged from the ground. bathtub
The place was named ground zero - this is how, since the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have called a point on the surface of the earth, located directly under the center of an air nuclear explosion ...
World Trade Center (1966-2001)
