One World Trade Center Gets Its Spire
The soon-to-be tallest building in North America had the spire that will top it moved to the roof today:
Construction crews on Thursday hoisted the final segment of spire that will top One World Trade Center and complete a piece of the New York City skyline missing since the 9/11 terror attacks.
A crane guided the final piece into a temporary structure that will house the section until final installation by iron workers at a later date.
Once installed, the spire — weighing more than 700 tons — will crown the Freedom Tower at 1,776 feet, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The building currently tops out at 1,368 feet.
9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels watched the spire piece rise Thursday morning from the memorial’s office windows overlooking the World Trade Center site.
“It’s a big milestone in the history of the rebirth of the site,” Daniels told NBC News. “This renewal of spirit, to see spring here and this beautiful weather, the memorial fountains and the flag on the spire piece going up. It was one of those things that you won’t forget.”
By chance, the hoisting fell exactly two years after Navy SEALS shot and killed Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the terror attacks that demolished the two World Trade Center towers and killed thousands of Americans.
“To have the One World Trade Center spire happen today — it feels poetic, and it feels like poetic justice,” Daniels said.
Indeed, it is. Once the spire is permanently attached to the structure, the building will officially measure an appropriate 1,776 feet.
Once the spire is permanently attached to the structure, the building will officially measure an appropriate 1,776 feet.
Only if the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat determines the spire to be an architectural element and not just an antenna, which they do not include when calculating a building’s height.
Okay, fair point.
I will say this much, though, One WTC has a far more elegant architectural design than the Twin Towers did. I remember back in the 70s when a lot of New Yorkers considered them kind of ugly and boxy looking.
I’ve always considered spires kinda cheating. The Willis (aka Sears) Tower has occupied space at 1354 feet and the CN tower at 1467 feet. By comparison, One World Trade Center’s highest occupied floor is a paltry 1254 feet.
Heck, the original One World Trade Centre had an occupied floor at 1355 feet, so this new one doesn’t even goes as high as the one its replacing.
@mantis:
They already have:
http://skyscrapercenter.com/new-york-city/one-world-trade-center/98/
OK, I’m a little geeky but as one who has worked on such a project my first thoughts went to the rigging necessary for the lifting of such an object. I wish I could have witnessed it, as the guys who accomplished it were true masters.
Wait, all they did was move some construction material to the roof for later installation? That’s news? Well, I guess it is since this construction of some replacement buildings has been going on for nearly a dozen years now.
But it just so happened this happened two years to the day after we killed the guy whose organization’s “overseas contingency” operation perpetrated the “workplace violence” that took down the buildings nine and a half years earlier?
@JKB: I have no idea where JKB lives, but it must be a nice day there, since there are apparently no clouds for him to yell at today.