MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-08-08 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Worht reading Part 1
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This piece, written in 1972, looks at the construction of the World
Trade Center's twin towers, at a time when they were a symbol of
possibility.
Soaring above the lower end of Manhattan Island is the world's largest
cluster of tall buildings, whose oblongs, spires, and turrets have,
since this century began, given New York the most spectacular skyline
anywhere. Each one of the towers whose upper extremities pierce the
clouds is rooted, below the city's surface, in a huge, unseen structure
that may itself be the size of a ten-story building. The finishing
touches are now being put on the biggest foundation in the world, which
is below what are, as of now, the highest pair of buildings in the
world. These are the twin hundred-and-ten-story towers of the World
Trade Center, built for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Nine or ten good-sized office or apartment buildings could have been
fitted into the hole that was dug for the Trade Center, and the
foundation proper is six times as large as that of the usual fifty-story
skyscraper and four times as large as its closest competitorâthe
basement of the neighboring sixty-story Chase Manhattan Bank Building.
On a hot, dry summer day nearly seven years ago, I went down to the
corner of West and Cortlandt Streets to witness the initial tests of
some basic equipment for the construction of the main foundation walls
of what would be the biggest building job ever attemptedâin height of
the structures, size of the foundation and excavation, and almost
everything else. I was there to witness the test with Robert E. White,
who is executive vice-president of Spencer, White & Prentis, a firm of
foundation experts that is almost always called in whenever architects
and builders think anything complicated or unexpected may occur below
ground. Robert White and his brother Edward, president of that firm, are
old friends of mine, and when I had mentioned not long before that I had
always wondered what kept the tall buildings in New York anchored to the
ground or whatever was underneath it, they suggested that I observe some
of the steps in the construction of the foundations for the Trade
Center. I knew that besides the two skyscrapers, each thirteen hundred
and fifty feet high, at least three other buildings would be erected on
the sixteen-acre site: an eight-story structure for the United States
Customs Bureau and two nine-story ones for exhibits, meetings, and trade
activities, around a five-acre plaza. To accommodate this extraordinary
new assemblage within fourteen blocks of jammed lower Manhattan, the
Port Authority had condemned a hundred and sixty-four buildings then
standing on the siteâincluding the big, rambling headquarters of the old
Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, now the Port Authority Trans-Hudson
System, known as PATHâand had closed off parts of five streets that ran
through it. I had studied the map, and knew their namesâCortlandt, Dey,
Fulton, Washington, and Greenwich. I also knew the names of the four
streets bordering the site: West Street, running parallel to the dock
area and beneath the West Side Highway along the bank of the Hudson
River; Liberty Street, to the south, which is only a brief walk from the
Battery; Church Street, a step from Trinity Church, on the east; and, to
the north, Vesey Street, where the New York Telephone Company has its
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