Construction of the World Trade Center
The construction of the first World Trade Center complex in New York City was conceived as an urban renewal project to help revitalize Lower Manhattan spearheaded by David Rockefeller. The project was developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Built primarily between 1966 and 1975, it was dedicated on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed on September 11, 2001. The idea for the World Trade Center arose after World War II as a way to supplement existing avenues of international commerce in the United States.
The World Trade Center was originally planned to be built on the east side of Lower Manhattan, but the New Jersey and New York state governments, which oversee the Port Authority, could not agree on this location. After extensive negotiations, the New Jersey and New York state governments agreed to support the World Trade Center project, which was built at the site of Radio Row in the Lower West Side of Manhattan, New York City. To make the agreement acceptable to New Jersey, the Port Authority agreed to take over the bankrupt Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, which brought commuters from New Jersey to the Lower Manhattan site and, upon the Port Authority's takeover of the railroad, was renamed PATH.
The Port Authority hired architect Minoru Yamasaki, who came up with the specific idea for twin towers. The towers were designed as framed tube structures, which provided tenants with open floor plans, uninterrupted by columns or walls. This was accomplished using numerous closely spaced perimeter columns to provide much of the strength to the structure, along with gravity load shared with the core columns. The elevator system, which made use of sky lobbies and a system of express and local elevators, allowed substantial floor space to be freed up for use as office space by making the structural core smaller. The design and construction of the World Trade Center, most centrally its twin towers, involved many other innovative techniques, such as the slurry wall for digging the foundation, and wind tunnel experiments.
Construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower began in August 1968, and the South Tower in 1969. Extensive use of prefabricated components helped to speed up the construction process. The first tenants moved into the North Tower in December 1970 and into the South Tower in January 1972. Four other low-level buildings were constructed as part of the World Trade Center in the early 1970s, and the complex was mostly complete by 1973. A seventh building, 7 World Trade Center, was opened in 1987. The complex was destroyed during the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Planning
Context
In 1942, Austin J. Tobin became the Executive Director of the Port Authority, beginning a 30-year career during which he oversaw the planning and development of the World Trade Center. The concept of establishing a "world trade center" was conceived during the post–World War II period, when the United States thrived economically and international trade was increasing. At the time, economic growth was concentrated in Midtown Manhattan, in part stimulated by Rockefeller Center, which had been developed in the 1930s.In 1946, a year after the war formally ended, the New York State Legislature passed a bill that called for a "world trade center" to be established. This trade center would increase New York City's role in transatlantic trade. The World Trade Corporation was founded, and a board was appointed by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to develop plans for the project. The concept was inspired by the Leipzig Trade Fair, which had been considered "the marketplace of all Europe" before being destroyed during World War II. Less than four months after the board was named, plans for a "world trade center" were put on hold. By then, architect John Eberson and his son Drew had devised a plan that included 21 buildings over a ten-block area, at an estimated cost of $150 million. Projections determined that such a complex would not be profitable due to a lack of demand. One estimated that the World Trade Center project would only be successful if at least 4,800 of the United States' largest 6,000 companies were involved. In 1949, the World Trade Corporation was dissolved by the New York State Legislature.
Original plans
Meanwhile, the Financial District of Lower Manhattan was left out of the economic boom of financial industries there. Lower Manhattan also saw less economic growth than Midtown because many workers moved to the suburbs, and they found it easier to commute to midtown than to downtown. The writer Paul Goldberger states that the Financial District, in particular, was devoid of "almost any kind of urban amenity", including entertainment, cultural hubs, or housing. Commercial industries along the ports of Lower Manhattan were also being replaced with industries elsewhere. David Rockefeller, who led urban renewal efforts in Lower Manhattan, constructed the One Chase Manhattan Plaza in a bid to bring jobs back. Rockefeller believed that the area would lose its status as the nation's financial hub if it were not redeveloped. However, the skyscraper, which opened in 1960, attracted far fewer tenants than expected.In 1958, Rockefeller established the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, which commissioned Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to draw up plans for revitalizing Lower Manhattan. The plans, made public in late June 1960, called for a World Trade Center to be built on a site along the East River, at the South Street Seaport, one of the Lower Manhattan ports that had seen a continuous decline in business over the past decade. The site would be bounded clockwise from the south by Old Slip, Water Street, Fulton Street, and South Street, and the complex itself would be located on "a two-story platform that would supersede and displace the conventional street grid". The proposed complex included a exhibition hall, as well as a 50- to 70-story building with a hotel located on some of its upper floors. Other amenities would include a theater, shops, and restaurants. The plan also called for a new securities exchange building, which the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association hoped would house the New York Stock Exchange.
David Rockefeller suggested that the Port Authority would be a logical choice for taking on the project because it had experience with similar large engineering projects, and also because the Port Authority, rather than Rockefeller, would be paying for the complex's construction. Rockefeller argued that the Trade Center would provide great benefits in facilitating and increasing volume of international commerce coming through the Port of New York and New Jersey. David's brother, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, formally asked the Port Authority to investigate the feasibility of this proposal. Given the importance of New York City in global commerce, Port Authority director Austin J. Tobin remarked that the proposed project should be the World Trade Center, and not just a generic "world trade center". Tobin commissioned an aide, Richard Sullivan, to lead a study on the feasibility of building a World Trade Center.
Sullivan published his study, "A World Trade Center in the Port of New York", on March 10, 1961. The report recommended building a trade center along the waterfront to facilitate commerce within the Port of New York. The study also stated that Rockefeller's suggested site near the South Street Seaport was the most ideal location for the trade center, but did not take locals' possible objections into account. The Port Authority formally backed the project the next day.
Agreement
The States of New York and New Jersey also needed to approve the project, given their control and oversight role of the Port Authority. Objections to the plan came from New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner, who resented that New York would be getting the $355 million project. Meyner would only agree if his own state were able to benefit. He was particularly concerned about ridership on New Jersey's Hudson and Manhattan Railroad. The H&M's ridership had declined substantially from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958, after new automobile tunnels and bridges opened across the Hudson River.The H&M's Hudson Terminal, a large and mostly decrepit office-building complex along Manhattan's Lower West Side, was located in a neighborhood referred to as the Radio Row, which was also seeing a general decline due to a loss of transportation options. The ferries across the Hudson River, which had seen 51 million annual riders in 1920, had stopped running, while the area's elevated lines were being dismantled in favor of high-speed subways. For many years, New Jersey residents and elected officials had proposed that the Port Authority purchase the H&M Railroad, but each time, the Port Authority had refused. Meyner suggested that he would support the plans for the World Trade Center project if the Port Authority took over the H&M. The Port Authority then started conducting another study on Meyner's suggestion of a H&M takeover.
In February 1961, Governor Rockefeller introduced a bill that would combine the H&M's $70 million acquisition with the $335 million trade center at South Street. Even though Nelson Rockefeller had been warned of the hastiness of the deal, as it highlighted the price disparity between the two agreements, the New York state legislature approved the bill anyway. Subsequently, negotiations with Governor Meyner regarding the World Trade Center project reached a stalemate. Months later, Sullivan was contacted by a colleague, Sidney Schachter, who had surveyed Hudson Terminal. After taking a walk around the Radio Row neighborhood, Schachter concluded that the site could be used for the World Trade Center. This would carry multiple benefits: the obsolete Hudson Terminal could be replaced with more modern office buildings; the H&M would get a new railway terminal; and the World Trade Center could be built without objections from New Jersey. Through the end of the year, the Port Authority continued to investigate the feasibility of taking over the H&M.
In December 1961, Tobin had several meetings with newly elected New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes. They ultimately agreed to a proposal to shift the World Trade Center project to the site of the H&M's Hudson Terminal. The new location not only was closer to New Jersey, but also was able to utilize the unused air rights above the Hudson Terminal: although other developers were theoretically allowed to build atop the terminal, none had done so. In acquiring the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, the Port Authority would also acquire the Hudson Terminal and other buildings, which were deemed obsolete. On January 22, 1962, the two states reached an agreement to allow the Port Authority to take over the railroad and to build the World Trade Center on Manhattan's lower west side. As part of the deal, the Port Authority renamed the H&M "Port Authority Trans-Hudson", or PATH for short. The New Jersey state legislature approved this deal in February 1962. After the World Trade Center legislation was approved by the New Jersey legislature, Chairman Tobin formed the World Trade Office to develop and operate the trade center, appointing Guy F. Tozzoli to lead the new office.
The new site constituted a mostly trapezoidal plot of land, with an extension on the north that resembled a "cork". The bulk of the land was a twelve-block area bounded by Vesey, Church, Liberty, and West Streets on the north, east, south, and west, respectively. All of these blocks would be combined to form the superblock upon which the World Trade Center was built. The "cork" was a smaller trapezoid bounded clockwise from the north by Barclay Street, West Broadway, Vesey Street, and Washington Street. This would become the site of 7 World Trade Center, although that building was not added until much later. The two blocks to the west and east of the "cork" were occupied by the New York Telephone Company Building and the Federal Building, respectively.