Original building (1971–2001) , pictured in summer 2001|150px The
construction of the original World Trade Center was conceived as an
urban renewal project and spearheaded by
David Rockefeller. The project was intended to help revitalize
Lower Manhattan. The project was planned by the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), which hired architect
Minoru Yamasaki. The twin towers at 1 and 2 World Trade Center were designed as
framed tube structures, giving tenants open floor plans, unobstructed by columns or walls.
One World Trade Center was the North Tower, and
Two World Trade Center was the South Tower. Each tower was over high, and occupied about of the total of
the site's land. Of the 110 stories in each tower, 8 were set aside as
mechanical floors. All the remaining floors were open for tenants. Each floor of the tower had of available space. The North and South tower had of total office space. Construction of the North Tower began in August 1966; extensive use of prefabricated components sped up the construction process. The first tenants moved into the North Tower in October 1971. At the time, the original One World Trade Center became the tallest building in the world, at tall. After a -tall antenna was installed in 1978, the highest point of the North Tower reached . In the 1970s, four other low-level buildings were built as part of the World Trade Center complex. A
seventh building was built in the mid-1980s. The entire complex of seven buildings had a combined total of of office space. At 8:46 a.m. (
EDT) on
September 11, 2001, five hijackers affiliated with
al-Qaeda crashed
American Airlines Flight 11 into the northern facade of the North Tower. After burning for 102 minutes, the North Tower collapsed due to structural failure at 10:28 a.m. (
EDT). When the North Tower collapsed, debris fell on the nearby
7 World Trade Center, which caught fire and collapsed at 5:21 p.m. (
EDT). Together with
a simultaneous attack on
the Pentagon in
Arlington, Virginia, and
a passenger revolt that resulted in a plane crash in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the attacks resulted in the deaths of
2,996 people (2,507 civilians, 343
firefighters, 72
law enforcement officers, 55
military personnel, and
the 19 hijackers).
Planning World Trade Center master plan File:WTC Building Arrangement in preliminary site plan.svg|thumb|Preliminary site plans for the World Trade Center's reconstruction. [ Comparison (background: pre-9/11, blue overlay: planned rebuild)]. Following the destruction of the original World Trade Center, there was debate regarding the future of the World Trade Center site. There were proposals for its reconstruction almost immediately, and by 2002, the
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had organized a competition to determine how to use the site. The proposals were part of a larger plan to memorialize the September 11 attacks and rebuild the complex. Already the site was becoming a tourist attraction; in the year following the attacks the Ground Zero site became the most visited place in the United States. On September 10, 2002, the Viewing Wall, a temporary display containing information about the attacks and listing the names of the dead, opened to the public. The same year, then–New York Governor
George Pataki faced accusations of
cronyism for supposedly using his influence to get the winning architect's design picked as a personal favor for his friend and campaign contributor,
Ronald Lauder. When the public rejected the first round of designs, a second, more open competition took place in December 2002, in which a design by
Daniel Libeskind was selected as the winner in February 2003. Other designs were submitted by
Richard Meier,
Peter Eisenman,
Charles Gwathmey, and
Steven Holl;
William Pedersen; and
Foster and Partners.
Peter Walker and
Michael Arad's "Reflecting Absence" proposal was selected as the site's 9/11 Memorial in January 2004.
David Childs of SOM, the main architect of One World Trade Center, designed a symmetrical tower that tapered on upper floors. Childs's design contrasted with Libeskind's plans for an asymmetrical tower with an antenna at its western end; disagreements over the designs threatened to delay the project. After Childs and Libeskind had worked out their disagreements, they announced a preliminary design for the building, dubbed the Freedom Tower, on December 19, 2003. The plan called for a tower that had a parallelogram floor plan, an asymmetrical spire, and a rooftop turbine. There was criticism concerning the limited number of floors that were designated for office space and other amenities in an early plan. Only 82 floors would have been habitable, and the total office space of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex would have been reduced by more than in comparison with the original complex. A final design for the "Freedom Tower" was formally unveiled on June 28, 2005. To address security issues raised by the NYPD, a concrete base was added to the design in April of that year. The design originally included plans to clad the base in glass prisms in order to address criticism that the building might have looked uninviting and resembled a "concrete bunker". However, the prisms were later found to be unworkable, as preliminary testing revealed that the prismatic glass easily shattered into large and dangerous shards. As a result, it was replaced by a simpler facade consisting of stainless steel panels and blast-resistant glass. Contrasting with Libeskind's original plan, the tower's final design tapered octagonally as it rose. On April 26, 2006, the PANYNJ approved a conceptual framework that allowed foundation construction to begin. A formal agreement was drafted the following day, the 75th anniversary of the 1931 opening of the
Empire State Building. Construction began in May; a formal groundbreaking ceremony took place when the first construction team arrived.
Construction under construction as of July 28, 2010 The symbolic cornerstone of One World Trade Center was laid in a ceremony on July 4, 2004. The stone had an inscription supposedly written by
Arthur J. Finkelstein. Construction was delayed until 2006 due to disputes over money, security, and design. Soon after, explosives were detonated at the construction site for two months to clear
bedrock for the building's foundation, onto which of concrete was poured by November 2007. In a December 18, 2006, ceremony held in nearby
Battery Park City, members of the public were invited to sign the first steel beam installed onto the building's base. It was welded onto the building's base on December 19, 2006. Foundation and steel installation began shortly afterward, so the tower's footings and foundation were nearly complete within a year. An estimate in February 2007 placed the initial construction cost of One World Trade Center at about $3 billion, or . In January 2008, two cranes were moved onto the site. Construction of the tower's concrete core, which began after the cranes arrived, An advanced "cocoon" scaffolding system was installed to protect workers from falling, and was the first such safety system installed on a steel structure in the city. The tower reached 52 floors and was over tall by December 2010. The tower's steel frame was halfway complete by then, but grew to 80 floors by the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, at which time its concrete flooring had reached 68 floors and the glass cladding had reached 54 floors. In 2009, the PANYNJ changed the official name of the building from "Freedom Tower" to "One World Trade Center", stating that this name was the "easiest for people to identify with". The "Freedom Tower" name had also been subject to ridicule on programs like
Saturday Night Live. The name change also served a practical purpose: real estate agents believed that it would be easier to lease space in a building with a traditional street address. Mass media company
Condé Nast became One WTC's anchor tenant in May 2011, leasing and relocating from
4 Times Square. While under construction, the tower was specially illuminated on several occasions. For example, it was lit in red, white, and blue for
Independence Day and the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and it was illuminated in pink for
Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The tower's loading dock could not be finished in time to move equipment into the completed building, so five temporary loading bays were added at a cost of millions of dollars. The temporary PATH station was not to be removed until its official replacement, the
World Trade Center Transportation Hub, was completed, blocking access to the planned loading area.
Chadbourne & Parke, a
Midtown Manhattan-based law firm, was supposed to lease in January 2012, but the deal was abruptly canceled that March.
Topping-out and completion By March 2012, One WTC's steel structure had reached 93 stories, growing to the 94th story (labeled as floor 100) and by the end of the month. The PANYNJ raised prices for bridge and tunnel tolls to raise funds, with a 56 percent toll increase scheduled between 2011 and 2015; however, the proceeds of these increases were not used to pay for the tower's construction. The still-incomplete tower became New York City's tallest building by roof height in April 2012, passing the roof height of the
Empire State Building. President
Barack Obama visited the construction site two months later and wrote, on a steel beam that would be hoisted to the top of the tower, the sentence "We remember, we rebuild, we come back stronger!" That same month, with the tower's structure nearing completion, the owners of the building began a public marketing campaign for the building, seeking to attract visitors and tenants. One World Trade Center's steel structure topped out at the 94th physical story (numbered as floor 104), with a total height of the roof top at , in August 2012. The tower's spire was then shipped from Quebec to New York in November 2012, following a series of delays. and was installed on January 15, 2013. By March 2013, two sections of the spire had been installed. Bad weather delayed the delivery of the final pieces. On May 10, 2013, the final piece of the spire was lifted to the top of One WTC, bringing the tower to its full height of , and making it the
fourth-tallest building in the world at the time. In subsequent months, the exterior elevator shaft was removed; the podium glass, interior decorations, and other finishes were being installed; and installation of concrete flooring and steel fittings was completed. announcement that One World Trade Center was the
tallest building in the United States, declaring that the mast on top of the building is a spire since it is a permanent part of the building's architecture. The building was also the tallest in the Western Hemisphere. By November 2014, at least two work-related deaths at the construction site were reported to OSHA.
Opening and early years On November 1, 2014, moving trucks started moving items for Condé Nast.
The New York Times noted that the area around the World Trade Center had transitioned from a financial area to one with technology firms, residences, and luxury shops, coincident with the building of the new tower. The building opened on November 3, 2014, and Condé Nast employees moved into 24 floors. Condé Nast occupied floors 20 to 44, having completed its move in early 2015. and
GQ. On November 12, 2014, shortly after the building opened supporting
wire rope cables of a suspended working platform slacked, trapping a two-man
window washing team. During the late 2010s, The Durst Organization leased most of the remaining vacant space. The tower reached 92 percent occupancy just before the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic in New York City in 2020. This led
Advance Publications, parent company of Conde Nast, to start withholding rent payments in January 2021. By March 2021, Condé Nast had filed plans to reduce the amount of office space that it leased. After a prolonged impasse, Condé Nast agreed in late 2021 to pay almost $10 million in back rent. In December 2021, the New York Liberty Development Corporation announced that it would refinance 1 WTC with a $700 million bond issue. The money from this bond issue would be used to retire the debt from the building's last refinancing in 2012. By March 2022, the building was 95 percent leased, a higher percentage than before the COVID-19 pandemic. One WTC's vacancy rate was half that of the city as a whole; its high occupancy rate contrasted with that of the original Twin Towers, which had never reached full occupancy until just before the September 11 attacks.
The Durst Organization began leasing out the unused offices in the tower's penthouse in 2025. == Architecture ==