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Dozens of workers belly up to the bar at gin mills on Murray Street -- two blocks from the sacred soil of Ground Zero and America's most scrutinized construction project -- shortly before noon every day. One group of three workers threw back eight drinks each in less than an hour before returning to the job. Reporters watched hard hats for a week as they walked from the pit for their hourlong meal break, typically at about 11:45 a.m. Many headed north on West Broadway to Murray Street, which is lined with bars and pubs. On Friday, June 19, three...

The incredible shrinking World Trade Center will be cut back from five iconic skyscrapers to just two signature towers under a new Port Authority plan, the Daily News has learned. Bludgeoned by recession and a war with developer Larry Silverstein, the Port Authority is proposing halving the office space it will build at Ground Zero - from 10 million square feet to 5 million, sources familiar with the plan say. The sources say the agency's new vision for the site calls for scrapping one tower that would have been taller than the Empire State Building and nixing two others that...

Here is video from this morning where former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani reacted to the decision to drop the name "Freedom Tower" from the building being built to replace the World Trade Center Towers that collapsed on September 11, 2001. The name has been dropped in favor of "One World Trade Center," with the excuse it will make the building more "marketable." The building will be 1,776 feet tall and is slated to open in 2013. Giuliani makes the point that the building will not be more safe because you give it the same name it had when it...

Score one for the taxpayers and owners of ground zero. No longer will the construction delayed tower be referred to as The Freedom Tower, it is going back to its legal name, One World Trade Center. “The fact is, more than 3 billion dollars of public money is invested in that building and, as a public agency, we have the responsibility to make sure it is completed and that we utilize the best strategy to make certain it is fully occupied,” the Port Authority said at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090328/ap_on_re_us/attacks_freedom_tower.

The tower — still under construction with a projected completion date of 2013 — no longer has the same architect, design or footprint on the 16-acre site. And this week, the owners of ground zero publicly parted ways with the Freedom Tower name, saying it would be more practical to market the tallest building in New York as the former north tower's name, One World Trade Center.

Critics are calling it unpatriotic to abandon the "Freedom Tower" name for an iconic skyscraper rising at ground zero. Former Gov. George Pataki gave the 1,776-foot tower its name in a speech two years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is "outrageous" for deciding to call the tower One World Trade Center.

Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia recently stated in reference to the restoration of Ground Zero, “As we market the building, we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way.” It would certainly seem that marketing and monetary gain are of far more importance to SOME than upholding the values that our men and women in uniform fight and die for everyday, LIBERTY and FREEDOM. The previously proposed name for the reconstructed tower after the infamous 9-11 terrorism attack that laid it down to ground zero was “the Freedom Tower” which undeniably is more fitting given that...

It took three years of stop-and-start negotiations, but a Chinese real estate company is finally signing a lease for space in a 102-story skyscraper under construction at ground zero, becoming the first commercial tenant for the rebuilt World Trade Center. The Beijing Vantone Industrial Company has agreed to a 23-year lease for floors 64 through 69 in what will be known as 1 World Trade Center, at the southeast corner of West and Vesey Streets. The $3.1 billion office building, once called the Freedom Tower, is scheduled to be completed in 2013. Vantone plans to build a cultural and business...

It took three years of stop-and-start negotiations, but a Chinese real estate company is finally signing a lease for space in a 102-story skyscraper under construction at ground zero, becoming the first commercial tenant for the rebuilt World Trade Center. The Beijing Vantone Industrial Company has agreed to a 23-year lease for floors 64 through 69 in what will be known as 1 World Trade Center, at the southeast corner of West and Vesey Streets. The $3.1 billion office building, once called the Freedom Tower, is scheduled to be completed in 2013. Vantone plans to build a cultural and business...

It looks like we can wake Green Day up: "September" has ended. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced Thursday that the 1,776-foot edifice that was to replace the World Trade Center will no longer be called the "Freedom Tower." Instead, it will have the less ornate appellation, "1 World Trade Center." Nice. The timing couldn't have been better. It follows on the heels of the Pentagon's ending the War on Terror. You didn't hear? You must have missed the memo. No, seriously. In a memo, following a request from the Office of Management and Budget, the...

Freedom is out of fashion at Ground Zero. Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Freedom Tower has been stripped of its patriotic name -- which has been swapped out for the more marketable "One World Trade Center," Port Authority officials conceded yesterday. More than seven years after the terror attacks and amid an effort to market the tower to international tenants, sentiment gave way to practicality. "As we market the building we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way," said PA Chairman Anthony Coscia. "One World Trade...

NEW YORK – The Freedom Tower is out. One World Trade Center is in. The agency that owns ground zero confirmed Thursday that the signature skyscraper replacing the towers destroyed on Sept. 11 will be more commonly known as One World Trade Center. The building under construction at the site was named the Freedom Tower in the first ground zero master plan. Officials at the time said the tallest, most symbolic of five planned towers at the site would demonstrate the country's triumph over terrorism.

Renzo Collavino is far from home, deep in a 16-acre hole at what was and what will be one of New York’s most famous landmarks. Work at the World Trade Center Freedom Tower is progressing slowly; too slowly, in fact, dragged back by a series of issues around how to best preserve existing structures and the subterranean rail lines below the massive hole excavated after the towers were downed in the infamous 911 attacks. “The project is several months behind schedule,” says Collavino, who with brother Paolo and father Mario, make up Collavino Construction Group, the Windsor-based outfit which is...

Planners seeking to rebuild the World Trade Center have always envisioned that the 16-acre site would have a vibrant streetscape with distinctive buildings, shops and cultural institutions lining a newly restored street grid. From the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001, a new neighborhood teeming with life would be born. But now, the Police Department’s latest security proposal entails heavy restrictions. According to a 36-page presentation given by top-ranking police officials in recent months, the entire area would be placed within a security zone, in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through “sally ports,” or barriers...

The owner of the World Trade Center has abandoned the timetable for rebuilding work at the site of the 9/11 attacks, saying it was "not realistic". Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive director, Christopher Ward, listed over a dozen issues that had slowed work and raised costs. New dates for the completion of a memorial, skyscrapers and a transit hub are expected to be issued in September. It is unclear if the centrepiece Freedom Tower will now be scaled back. The tower, intended as a replacement for the destroyed Twin Towers, had been scheduled for completion in...

It's a good thing Osama wasn't walking through SoHo yesterday morning. Two sets of confidential blueprints for the planned Freedom Tower, which is set to rise at Ground Zero, were carelessly dumped in a city garbage can on the corner of West Houston and Sullivan streets, The Post has learned. PHOTO GALLERY: WTC Blueprints Found In TrashExperts said the detailed, floor-by-floor schematics contain enough detail for terrorists to plot a devastating attack. "Secure Document - Confidential," warns the title page on each of the two copies of the 150-page schematic that a homeless, recovering drug addict discovered in the public...

NEW YORK - A homeless man has come forward with two sets of confidential ground zero blueprints that he says were dumped in a Lower Manhattan trash can. The man brought the Freedom Tower plans to the New York Post, which says the 150-page schematic is marked: "Secure Document - Confidential." The documents are dated Oct. 5, 2007. They contain plans for each floor, the thickness of the concrete-core wall, and the location of air ducts, elevators, electrical systems and support columns. The agency that owns the World Trade Center site, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,...

It's rising. The first steel columns were bolted into the foundation of the new Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, including two that were signed by hundreds of people. Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg watched as a crane lifted a 25-ton steel column bearing the words "Freedom Tower" and workers bolted it into place. The construction crew cheered as the crane then lifted two other columns, both signed by hundreds of people last week in Virginia, where it was made, and at Ground Zero on Saturday. One of the workers was Brian Lyons, a superintendent with Tischman Construction...

<p>New York took a step toward restoring its skyline as workers erected the first two white columns of the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero Tuesday.</p> <p>"The steel rises, the Freedom Tower rises from the ashes of September 11th and the people of New York and the people of America can be proud," said George Pataki, on what was likely his final trip to the World Trade Center site as New York's governor. With a giant red crane, crews hoisted the first massive steel beam -- bearing the words "Freedom Tower" and a picture of an American flag -- onto the ground as Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a host of other officials looked on from a balcony.</p>

NEW YORK (AP)-Two 25-ton steel coloumns-one bearing signatures of American steelworkers who helped make it-rose at ground zero Tuesday, a milestone in prlonged efforts to build the skyscraper that will replace the twin towers of the World Trade Center.