World Trade Center (1973–2001), a ledger of building statistics

The buildings involved


These are the buildings that were directly involved in the incident. Some were destroyed, fatally damaged\burnt out, or repairable after the 9\11 attacks. The West Street Building (90 West Street).
 * 1) WTC 2 (South Tower)
 * 2) WTC 1 (North Tower)
 * 3) 7 World Trade Center
 * 4) St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church (WTC)
 * 5) Marriott Hotel (3 WTC)
 * 6) South Plaza (4 WTC)
 * 7) U.S. Customs (6 WTC)
 * 8) The Deutsche Bank Building on 130 Liberty Street (5 WTC)
 * 9) World Trade Center station (PATH)
 * 1) Borough of Manhattan Community College 's Fiterman Hall
 * 2) World Financial Center buildings
 * 3) One Liberty Plaza
 * 4) The Mall at the World Trade Center
 * 5) Millenium Hilton
 * 6) FDNY 10 Firehouse
 * 7) 90 Church Street
 * 8) West St/Vesey St. bus stop and shelter
 * 9) The Verizon Building (140 West Street)
 * 10) The Verizon Building (375 Pearl Street)

Local Geology
The western portion of the World Trade Center site was originally under the Hudson River, with the shoreline in the vicinity of Greenwich Street. It was on this shoreline close to the intersection of Greenwich and the former Dey Street that Dutch explorer Adriaen Block's ship, the Tyger, burned to the waterline in November 1613, stranding Block and his crew and forcing them to overwinter on the island. They built the first European settlement in Manhattan. The remains of the ship were buried under landfill when the shoreline was extended starting in 1797, and were discovered during excavation work in 1916. The remains of a second ship from the eighteenth century were discovered in 2010 during excavation work at the site. The ship, believed to be a Hudson River sloop, was found just south of where the Twin Towers used to stand, about 20 feet below the surface. The old shore line of the southn half of the island was finaly replaced by the crurrent one by the 1920s.

Before the World Trade Center


Later, the area became Radio Row. New York City's Radio Row, which existed from 1921 to 1966, was a warehouse district on the Lower West Side in the Financial District. Harry Schneck opened City Radio on Cortlandt Street in 1921, and eventually the area held several blocks of electronics stores, with Cortlandt Street as its central axis. The used radios, war surplus electronics (e.g., ARC-5 radios), junk, and parts often piled so high they would spill out onto the street, attracting collectors and scroungers. According to a business writer, it also was the origin of the electronic component distribution business.

The idea of establishing a World Trade Center in New York City was first proposed in 1943. The New York State Legislature passed a bill authorizing New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to begin developing plans for the project but the plans were put on hold in 1949. During the late 1940s and 1950s, economic growth in New York City was concentrated in Midtown Manhattan. To help stimulate urban renewal in Lower Manhattan, David Rockefeller suggested that the Port Authority build a World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

Plans for the use of eminent domain to remove the shops in Radio Row bounded by Vesey, Church, Liberty, and West Streets began in 1961 when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was deciding to build the world's first world trade center. They had two choices: the east side of Lower Manhattan, near the South Street Seaport; and the west side, near the H&M station, Hudson Terminal. Initial plans, made public in 1961, identified a site along the East River for the World Trade Center. As a bi-state agency, the Port Authority required approval for new projects from the governors of both New York and New Jersey. New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner objected to New York getting a $335 million project. Toward the end of 1961, negotiations with outgoing New Jersey Governor Meyner reached a stalemate.

At the time, ridership on New Jersey's Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (H&M) had declined substantially from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958 after new automobile tunnels and bridges had opened across the Hudson River. In a December 1961 meeting between Port Authority director Austin J. Tobin and newly elected New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes, the Port Authority offered to take over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad to have it become the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH). The Port Authority also decided to move the World Trade Center project to the Hudson Terminal building site on the west side of Lower Manhattan, a more convenient location for New Jersey commuters arriving via PATH. With the new location and Port Authority acquisition of the H&M Railroad, New Jersey agreed to support the World Trade Center project. In compensation for Radio Row business owners' displacement, the PANYNJ gave each business $3,000 each, without regard to how long the business had been there or how prosperous the business was. After the area had been purchased for the World Trade Center in March 1964, Radio Row was demolished starting in March 1965. It was completely demolished by 1966.

Approval was also needed from New York City Mayor John Lindsay and the New York City Council. Disagreements with the city centered on tax issues. On August 3, 1966, an agreement was reached that the Port Authority would make annual payments to the City in lieu of taxes for the portion of the World Trade Center leased to private tenants. In subsequent years, the payments would rise as the real estate tax rate increased.

St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church
The building that came to house the church was built around 1832. It was originally a private dwelling which was later turned into a tavern. In 1916, Greek American immigrants started the congregation of St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. Before moving to Cedar Street, its parishioners worshiped in the dining room of a hotel on Morris Street run by Stamatis Kalamarides. In 1919, five families raised $25,000 to buy the tavern and converted it into a church, and started to hold worship services in 1922. The church building was only 22 feet (6.7 m) wide, 56 feet (17 m) long, and 35 feet (11 m) tall and was easily dwarfed by the 110 story Twin Towers, which were completed in 1972 and 1973. Despite its small size and unusual location (all the adjacent buildings had been demolished, making the church be surrounded on three sides by a parking lot), before the attacks the church had a dedicated congregation of about 70 families led by Father John Romas. On Wednesdays, the building was opened to the public and many people, including office workers from the towers and non-Greek Orthodox, would enter the quiet worship space for contemplation and prayer.

Among the church's most valuable physical possessions were some of the relics (remains) of St Nicholas, St Catherine, and St Sava, which had been donated to the church by Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia. These relics were removed from their safe on holy days for veneration; they were never recovered after the attack.

90 West Street
90 West Street (alternatively West Street Building) is a building in Lower Manhattan, New York City designed by architect Cass Gilbert and structural engineer Gunvald Aus for the West Street Improvement Corporation. When completed in 1907, the building's Gothic styling and ornamentation served to emphasize its 23-story height, and foreshadowed Gilbert's later work on the Woolworth Building. Originally built as an office building, the main tenant was the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and the top floor was occupied by Garret's Restaurant, which advertised itself as the "world's highest restaurant".

It is located on West Street, between Cedar and Albany Streets, just south of the World Trade Center site, the building had a view to the Hudson River before Battery Park City was built on fill across West Street.

The Federal Office Building at 90 Church Street includes the United States Postal Service's Church Street Station, which is responsible for the 10048 ZIP code in New York City. The building takes up the full block between Church Street and West Broadway and between Vesey and Barclay Streets in the Civic Center neighborhood of Manhattan.

The AIA Guide to New York City says about the building: "A boring limestone monolith that has trouble deciding between a heritage of stripped down neo-Classical and a new breath of Art Deco."

90 Church Street was designed by Cross & Cross, Pennington, Lewis & Mills and Louis A. Simon, who was Supervising Architect of the Department of the Treasury at the time. The architectural style of the building is a mixture of Neo-classicism and Art Deco. It has two towers and the facade is clad in limestone.

The building was completed in 1935, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In addition to housing the Postal Service, the 90 Church Street building contains offices of the New York State Public Service Commission, the New York State Health Department, and the New York City Housing Authority.

7 World Trade Center
The original 7 World Trade Center was a 47-story building, designed by Emery Roth & Sons, with a red granite facade. The building was 610 feet (190 m) tall, with a trapezoidal footprint that was 330 ft (100 m) long and 140 ft (43 m) wide. Tishman Realty & Construction managed construction of the building, which began in 1983. In May 1987, the building opened, becoming the seventh structure of the World Trade Center.

The building was constructed above a Con Edison substation that had been on the site since 1967. The substation had a caisson foundation designed to carry the weight of a future building of 25 stories containing 600,000 sq ft (56,000 m2). The final design for 7 World Trade Center was for a much larger building than originally planned when the substation was built. The structural design of 7 World Trade Center therefore included a system of gravity column transfer trusses and girders, located between floors 5 and 7, to transfer loads to the smaller foundation. Existing caissons installed in 1967 were used, along with new ones, to accommodate the building. The 5th floor functioned as a structural diaphragm, providing lateral stability and distribution of loads between the new and old caissons. Above the 7th floor, the building's structure was a typical tube-frame design, with columns in the core and on the perimeter, and lateral loads resisted by perimeter moment frames.

A shipping and receiving ramp, which served the entire World Trade Center complex, occupied the eastern quarter of the 7 World Trade Center footprint. The building was open below the 3rd floor, providing space for truck clearance on the shipping ramp. The spray-on fireproofing for structural steel elements was gypsum-based Monokote which had a two-hour fire rating for steel beams, girders and trusses, and a three-hour rating for columns.

Mechanical equipment was installed on floors four through seven, including 12 transformers on the 5th floor. Several emergency generators installed in the building were used by the Office of Emergency Management, Salomon Smith Barney, and other tenants. In order to supply the generators, 24,000 gallons (91,000 L) of diesel fuel were stored below ground level. Diesel fuel distribution components were located at ground level, up to the ninth floor. After the World Trade Center bombings of February 26, 1993, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani decided to situate the emergency command center and associated fuel tanks at 7 World Trade Center. Although this decision was criticized in light of the events of 9/11, the fuel in the building is today not believed to have contributed to the collapse of the building. The roof of the building included a small west penthouse and a larger east mechanical penthouse.

Each floor had 47,000 sq ft (4,400 m2) of rentable office space which made the building's floor plans considerably larger than most office buildings in the City. In all, 7 World Trade Center had 1,868,000 sq ft (173,500 m2) of office space. Two pedestrian bridges connected the main World Trade Center complex, across Vesey Street, to the third floor of 7 World Trade Center. The lobby of 7 World Trade Center had three murals by artist Al Held: The Third Circle, Pan North XII, and Vorces VII.

Marriott Hotel 3 WTC
The Marriott World Trade Center was a 22-story steel-framed hotel building with 825 rooms. It had a roof height of 73.7 m (242 ft) and was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Its structural engineer was Leslie E. Robertson Associates with Tishman Construction serving as the main contractor. Construction began in 1979. It opened in July 1981 as the Vista International Hotel and was located at 3 World Trade Center in New York City.

The Vista International Hotel was the first hotel to open in Lower Manhattan since 1836. The hotel was originally owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and KUO Hotels of Korea with Hilton International acting as management agent. It was sold in 1995 to Host Marriott Corporation.

The hotel was connected to the North and South Towers, and many went through the hotel to get to the Twin Towers. The hotel had a few establishments including The American Harvest Restaurant, The Greenhouse Cafe, Tall Ships Bar & Grill, a store called Times Square Gifts, The Russia House Restaurant and a Grayline New York Tours Bus ticket counter, a gym that was the largest of any hotel in New York at the time, and a hair salon named Olga's. The hotel also had 26,000 square feet (2,400 m2) of meeting space on the entire 3rd floor along with The New Amsterdam Ballroom on the main floor, and was considered a four-diamond hotel by AAA.

The Mall at the World Trade Center
Westfield World Trade Center is a shopping center at the World Trade Center complex which is operated and managed by Westfield Corporation. The mall opened on August 16, 2016. It replaces an earlier shopping center called The Mall at the World Trade Center, which was located in the concourse area of the original World Trade Center until it was destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Prior to 9/11, the mall had been leased to the Westfield Group by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the complex. Westfield intended to rename the mall Westfield Shoppingtown World Trade Center, and embark on a major expansion and renovation program. Plans called for the addition of 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of new mall space and a few well-known sit-down restaurants. This renovation never happened due to its destruction.

WTC 1

 * Tallest building in the USA (both including and exclude the communication's mast)- 1972–1974
 * Tallest building in New York State 1971 (both including and exclude the communication's mast)- 2001.
 * Tallest building in New York City 1971 (both including and excluding the communication's mast)- 2001.
 * Tallest building in the world (both including and exclude the communication's mast)- 1971 to 1974.

WTC 1 and 2 jointly

 * Fist place to be 'plane slammed', that is deliberately hit by a civil liner as a act of war or terrorism!
 * The fact that is stayed up any time after having such heavy damage as 9/11. The 1970s engineering was obviously of a good quality since they could not have foreseen 9/11 or been up to preparing for such an event with only 1970s technology, yet they made it strong enough not to instantly collapses on impact with the jets flown in to it!
 * Most 'sky lobbies'- 1971 to 1974.
 * Most elevators- 1971 to 1974.
 * Building with the most floors- 1972–2001.
 * Tallest twin towers in the world- 1972–1998.
 * Building with the most toilets 1972–2001

The Verizon Building (140 West Street)
The building has been called "one of the most significant structures in skyscraper design" through out it's history.

The Verizon Building (375 Pearl Street)
Paul Goldberger decried it at the time as the “most disturbing” of the phone company’s new switching centers because it “overwhelms the Brooklyn Bridge towers, thrusts a residential neighborhood into shadow and sets a tone of utter banality.” On April 3, 2012, the UK's online version of the Daily Telegraph showed 375 Pearl Street ranked 20th in a series of "the ugliest buildings in the world".

90 West Street
The "world's highest restaurant" in 1907.

Their fate



 * 1) WTC 2 South Tower- Catastrophicupper boddy damage and then a total collapse.
 * 2) WTC 1 North Tower- Catastrophicupper boddy damage and then a total collapse.
 * 3) 7 World Trade Center- It can be assumed that heavy blast damage compromising the structural integrity of the building, which in turn lead to it's collapsed. Many windows were blown in, but otherwise there was only minimal visible damage and modest fires.
 * 4) St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church (WTC)- Crushed under debris and aicraft wrekage.
 * 5) Marriott Hotel 3 WTC- Crushed under debris.
 * 6) South Plaza 4 WTC- Slightly damaged, some fires and many windows blown in by the blast.
 * 7) U.S. Customs 6 WTC- Reduced to ruins by falling debris and later demolished.
 * 8) The Deutsche Bank Building (130 Liberty Street)- Initially is sustained major impact damage from falling debris. It soon partly caught fire and was also slightly damaged in places by the fairs involved. It was later condemned as uninhabitable because of toxic conditions relating to levels chemicals, dust, water and mold inside the office tower. It was later deconstructed.
 * 9) The Verizon Building (375 Pearl Street)- suffered minor accidental fire damage but have been repaired.
 * 10) The Mall at the World Trade Center- Crushed by falling debris.
 * 11) World Trade Center station (PATH)- Crushed under debris, but later rebuilt.
 * 12) 90 West Street- suffered major impact damage but have been restored.
 * 13) Borough of Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall- condemned due to extensive damage after being crushed by debris in the attacks, and is being rebuilt.
 * 14) World Financial Center buildings- had moderate damage and have since been restored.
 * 15) One Liberty Plaza- had moderate damage and have since been restored.
 * 16) Millenium Hilton- had moderate damage and have since been restored.
 * 17) 90 Church Street- had moderate damage and have since been restored.
 * 18) West St/Vesey St. bus stop- Crushed by falling debris.
 * 19) FDNY 10 Firehouse- closed for a couple of days as the roof and garage were cleared of dust, rubble, glass and other minor debris. It closed for about 1.5 years soon after when surveyors found impact related structural damage in the building that needed to be repaid. A memorial wall was added to the building when it was partly re-built.
 * 20) The Verizon Building (140 West Street)- suffered major impact damage but have been restored. The underground cable vaults belonging to Verizon, along with other underground utility infrastructure were also heavily damaged from water and debris.

Lost artworks


Many works of art were destroyed in the collapse.
 * Ideogram (1967) stainless steel sculpture by James Rosati
 * Cloud Fortress (1975) a large, black granite piece by Japanese artist Masayuki Nagare, destroyed in the 9/11 rescue and recovery efforts.
 * The World Trade Center Tapestry a 20' x 35' tapestry by Joan Miró that hung in the South Tower Lobby.
 * Sky Gate, New York (1977–78) large wooden sculpture by Louise Nevelson
 * A memorial fountain for the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by Elyn Zimmerman
 * World Trade Center Stabile (1971) a 25' red steel sculpture by Alexander Calder. Approximately 30% of the sculpture was recovered.
 * Some 300 sculptures and drawings by Auguste Rodin, part of the Cantor Fitzgerald collection.
 * Needle Tower (1968) by Kenneth Snelson.
 * Recollection Pond, a tapestry by Romare Bearden.
 * Path Mural, by Germaine Keller.
 * Commuter Landscape, a large mural by Cynthia Mailman.
 * Fan Dancing with the Birds, a mural by Hunt Slonem.
 * The Entablature Series by Roy Lichtenstein
 * Approximately 40,000 negatives of photographs by Jacques Lowe documenting the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
 * The Sphere, an abstract sculpture by Fritz Koenig, survived the collapse but was seriously damaged, and now serves as a memorial. The Sphere  is 25 feet (7.6 m) high and cast in 52 bronze segments. Koenig considered it his "biggest child". It was put together in Bremen, Germany and shipped as a whole to Lower Manhattan. The artwork was meant to symbolize world peace through world trade, and was placed at the center of a ring of fountains and other decorative touches designed by trade center architect Minoru Yamasaki to mimic the Grand Mosque of Mecca, Masjid al-Haram, in which The Sphere stood at the place of the Kaaba The structural engineers who took a part on this project was  Leslie E. Robertson Associates  (LERA), who helped make the globe possible to rotate once every 24 hours.

Many other works of art and valuable artifacts, found in safe deposit boxes located throughout the towers, were also destroyed. Two other sculptures were damaged, but not destroyed by the attacks. These are Red Cube by Isamu Noguchi and Joie de Vivre by Mark di Suvero, located down the street from the World Trade Center. They were repaired and still stand today.

Political theories

 * The CIA ran Ossama BinLardin as a double agent to wind up gullible young would-be jihadists as a sinister black opps mission. When they did 9\11, the U.S. government used it to justify invading the Gulf, in which they betrayed Ossama BinLardin and planned to have him liquidated soon afterwards. Oil, gas, power, Islamophobia, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Iran, Arabphobia  and Saddam Hussein were all cited as possible motives, but talk on motives is only speculation.

Structural issues

 * The Twin Towers were designed not to totally collapses due to the intrinsic value of how skyscrapers are made. The tops would have come down as well as the stuff that got blown up, but not a 100% collapses in to the foundations, unless it was either very heavily bombed at ground level or had the structural integrity of the buildings' steel core fatally compromised in the event or by either sabotage or poor construction work in it's building and\or casting at the steel mill prior to use.
 * The Twin Towers also collapsed downwards (pancaking) instead of sideways in to the path of the aircraft like a tree falling on to the side the wedge is cut out of or away from them like a tree falling away from were a wedge is driven in to it.
 * 7 WTC collapsed after minimal visible damage and modest fires, in 7 second, with a full symmetry on-top of it's footprint in a collapse pattern reminiscent of controlled demolition of an unwanted office block or residential tower block.

Corrupted of incompetent spies

 * The American establishment ignored CIA, FAA, FBI, Pakistani, Saudi Arabian, Iranian, British, Libyan, Northern Alliance of Afghanistan and Malaysian security services' rumors and hints, as well as a few cryptic comments by Saddam Hussies and the Taliban.

The FAA screwed up and\or sold out

 * The FAA's command center contradicted Boston ARTCC by feeding misleading info such a wrong aircraft N-numbers, known pre-hijack flight data, post-hijack routes, last known locations, etc, on to NEADS' command center and\or NORAD so they could not find and shoot down the aircraft. This allowed the attack on the Pentagon (there was enough time to act) and possibly the attack on the second Twin Tower (the timing was close). The fourth jet, United Airlines Flight 93, who crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to take control before it could reach the hijacker's intended target in Washington, D.C., could also been shot down in time.

Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. knew it all!

 * One week before 9\11, Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd., left the WTC after 30 years (allegedly with 6 months notice) with out no apparent long term reason to. Did they know what was going on and chose not to tell any one else so they could take advantage of the attack to further their own independent corporate plots against their business rivals!

Also see

 * 1) WTC
 * 2) CIS Tower
 * 3) Terrorism
 * 4) Terrorist organisations
 * 5) Famous buildings