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Layouts, Pictures, and Building Details on the World Trade Center
Great Buildings ^ | FR Post 09-14-01 | Editorial Staff

Posted on 09/14/2001 8:27:18 PM PDT by vannrox

 

World Trade Center

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Architect Minoru Yamasaki
Location New York, New York
Date 1970 to 1977. Demolished by terrorist attack on September 11, 2001
Building Type skyscraper, commercial office tower
 Construction System steel frame, glass curtain wall
Climate temperate
Context urban
Style Modern
Notes Yamasaki and Associates, with Emery Roth and Sons. 110 stories tall.
Images Building Images
Photo, World Trade Center towers, from the Brooklyn Bridge. Howard Davis. cp: Howard Davis -->
Photo, looking up, up, up! Lawrence A. Martin, PCD.3235.1012.0545.021. cp: 1993 Lawrence A. Martin -->
Photo, exterior, across open space and fountain Lawrence A. Martin, PCD.3235.1012.0545.022. cp: 1993 Lawrence A. Martin -->
Photo, lobby interior at mezzanine Lawrence A. Martin, PCD.3235.1012.0545.020. cp: 1993 Lawrence A. Martin -->
Photo, looking east from the Hudson River to Manhattan and the World Trade Center towers, with U.S. flag.

Manhattan Overviews
Photo, looking south from the Empire State Building, with the World Trade Center towers in the distance, wide angle. Howard Davis. cp: Howard Davis -->
Photo, Manhattan, looking west from the Brooklyn Bridge, with the World Trade Center towers. Howard Davis. cp: Howard Davis -->
Photo, Manhattan overview with the World Trade Center towers in the distance. Howard Davis. cp: Howard Davis -->
Photo, looking south from the Empire State Building, with the World Trade Center towers in the distance. Howard Davis. cp: Howard Davis -->
Photo, looking northeast from the Hudson River to Manhattan and the World Trade Center towers.
Photo, looking south across Manhattan from the Empire State Building, with the World Trade Center towers in the distance.
Photo, looking south at night toward the World Trade Center, with the Empire State Building in the foreground.

Satellite Images   courtesy of spaceimaging.com
Satellite image, showing the intact World Trade Center from above. spaceimaging.com cp: 2001 spaceimaging.com -->
Satellite image, showing the intact World Trade Center in its lower Manhattan context. (large image) spaceimaging.com cp: 2001 spaceimaging.com -->
Satellite image, looking south over lower Manhattan after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. (large image) spaceimaging.com cp: 2001 spaceimaging.com -->

Great Buildings Nearby
Location map of lower Manhattan — Click on building names to view building pages.

Posters
Poster Image - World Trade Center Overview in Context
Poster Image - World Trade Center at night from the Empire State Building

Drawings Site Plan Drawing
Typical Floor Plan

... contributions appreciated

Discussion World Trade Center Commentary

"Yamasaki's commission to design the World Trade Center with the New York firm of Emery Roth and Sons...house(s) anyone and anything connected world trade. The program presented to Yamasaki, who was selected over a dozen other American architects, was quite explicit: twelve million square feet of floor area on a sixteen acre site, which also had to accommodate new facilities for the Hudson tubes and subway connections—all with a budget of under $500 million. The vast space needs and limited site immediately implied a high-rise development that...make(s) the adjacent drama of Manhattan's business tip seem timid in comparison....

"After studying more than one hundred schemes in model form, Yamasaki decided on a two-tower development to contain the nine million square feet of office space. One tower became unreasonable in size and unwieldy structurally, yet several towers became too approximate for their size and 'looked too much like a housing project'; whereas two towers gave a reasonable office area on each floor, took advantage of the magnificent views, and allowed manageable structural system. The twin towers, with 110 floors rising 1,353 feet, ... (are) the tallest in the world. From observation decks at the top of the towers it...(is) possible to see 45 miles in every direction....One distinct advantage of the project's enormity is the architectural opportunity to advance the art of building. Yamasaki re-examined the skyscraper from the first principles, considering no ground so hallowed that it could not be questioned, especially in view of the potential of modern technology. The usual economic prohibition on 'custom-made' was out, as virtually anything made for the Center would automatically become a stock item. 'Economy is not in the sparseness of materials that we use,' said Yamasaki of his $350 million estimated cost, 'but in the advancement of technology, which is the real challenge.'

"The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures.

"The other primary obstacle to be overcome in the skyscraper is the elevator system, and Yamasaki has shown himself equally imaginative here. A combination of express and local elevator banks, called a skylobby system, it is particularly efficient because it requires fewer elevator shafts—thus freeing approximately 75 percent of the total floor area for occupancy; had a conventional elevator arrangement been adopted, only approximately 50 percent would have been available. The building has three vertical zones; express elevators serve skylobbies at the forty-first and seventy-fourth floors; from these, and from the plaza level, four banks of local elevators carry passengers to each of the three zones.

"From the outset, Yamasaki believed that there should be an open plaza from which one could appreciate the scale of the towers upon approach. There is little or no sense of scale, for instance, standing at the base of the Empire State Building. Yamasaki's plaza...(is) sheltered from the river winds and contained by five-story buildings which...house shops, exhibition pavilions and a 250-room hotel."

"'The World Trade Center should,' Yamasaki said, 'because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.' "

—from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p194-195.

The Creator's Words

"There are a few very influential architects who sincerely believe that all buildings must be 'strong'. The word 'strong' in this context seems to connote 'powerful' — that is, each building should be a monument to the virility of our society. These architects look with derision upon attempts to build a friendly, more gentle kind of building. The basis for their belief is that our culture is derived primarily from Europe, and that most of the important traditional examples of European architecture are monumental, reflecting the need of the state, church , or the feudal families — the primary patrons of these buildings — to awe and impress the masses. This is incongruous today. Although it is inevitable for architects who admire these great monumental buildings of Europe to strive for the quality most evident in them — grandeur, the elements of mysticism and power, basic to cathedrals and palaces, are also incongruous today, because the buildings we build for our times are for a totally different purpose."

— Minoru Yamasaki. from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p186.

Building Details

110 stories, 1353 feet (412 meters) tall   (by some sources, one tower was 1368 feet, the other 1362)
An acre of rentable space on each floor of each tower.
Owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The world's tallest building for a short time, until surpassed by the Sears Tower.

The site is 16 acres in lower Manhattan, with buildings grouped around a five acre central plaza. The site is bounded by Vesey Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street on the west, about three blocks north of the New York Stock Exchange.

Observation deck, South Tower, WTC 2, floor 107 (summer hours 9:30am to 11:30pm).
Skylobbies on floors 44 and 78 served by high speed elevators.
The two nine story Plaza Buildings, with roughly ell-shaped plans, flank the main entrance to the complex from Church Street, with WTC 4 on the south and WTC 5 on the north.

On Friday, February 26, 1993, a massive terrorist bomb was exploded in the Center's public parking garage, but the Towers survived.

World Trade Center Disaster — Tuesday, September 11, 2001

On Tuesday, One World Trade Center, the north tower, was hit by a hijacked 767 commercial jet airplane at 8:45am New York time. Two World Trade Center, the south tower, was hit by another similar hijacked jet at 9:03am.   (In separate but related attacks, the Pentagon building near Washington D.C. was hit by a hijacked 757 at 9:43am, and at 10:10am, a fourth hijacked jetliner crashed in Pennsylvania.)   The south tower, WTC 2, which had been hit second, was the first to suffer a complete structural collapse at 10:05am. The north tower, WTC 1, then also collapsed at 10:30am. WTC 7, a substantial 47 story office building in its own right, built in 1987, caught fire and later in the afternoon also collapsed. As of Friday evening, possible collapse of other nearby buildings was feared, including WTC 6, the U.S Customs House to the north; WTC 3, the 22 story Marriot World Trade Center hotel just west of Tower Two; WTC 4 and 5, the Plaza Buildings to the east; and One Liberty Plaza, a 54 floor, 743' tall building across Church Street to the east. Some of these may already have collapsed, with the fact perhaps going unnoticed or at least unreported amidst the general devastation of the site.

Resources Sources on World Trade Center

"World Trade Center Destroyed", cover page editorial, by Kevin Matthews and B.J. Novitski with Michael Crosbie, ArchitectureWeek No. 66, 2001.0912, pN1.1.

AIA Guide to New York City. NA 735.N5 A78 1988. p48-49.

Manhattan Architecture. NA 735.N5B47 1988. p18, 19, 36, 37, 96-99.

Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. New York: Walker and Company, 1966. LC 66-22504. IBSN 0442017510. discussion p186, 194-195. — Out of print, but you can request a search for this book at Amazon.com

Lawrence A. Martin, University of Oregon. Slides from photographer's collection, September 1993. PCD.3235.1012.0545.020. PCD.3235.1012.0545.022. PCD.3235.1012.0545.021.

Minoura Yamasaki. A Life in Architecture. New York: Weatherhill, 1979. NA737.Y3A2 1979. ISBN 0-8348-0136-1. LC 79-11561. drawing of site plan, p119. drawing of ground plan of a tower, p118.

Amazon.com   Find books about World Trade Center

Search the RIBA architecture library catalog for more references.
 

Web Resources Links on World Trade Center

World Trade CenterThe official Port Authority web site, including crisis info.

Google    Search the web for World Trade Center

We appreciate your  suggestions  for links about World Trade Center.

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1 posted on 09/14/2001 8:27:18 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: vannrox

2 posted on 09/14/2001 8:28:42 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: vannrox

3 posted on 09/14/2001 8:29:49 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: vannrox

4 posted on 09/14/2001 8:30:21 PM PDT by B4Ranch
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To: vannrox

TYPICAL FLOOR LAYOUT


5 posted on 09/14/2001 8:32:08 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: vannrox

6 posted on 09/14/2001 8:33:14 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: vannrox
Now I know what that one standing structure was that I've been continually seeing since the dust has lifted......


7 posted on 09/14/2001 8:33:24 PM PDT by hole_n_one
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To: vannrox

8 posted on 09/14/2001 8:35:56 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: B4Ranch

9 posted on 09/14/2001 8:38:25 PM PDT by vannrox (MyEMail)
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Comment #10 Removed by Moderator

Comment #11 Removed by Moderator

To: hole_n_one, vannrox
vannrox ... GREAT post! Thank you.

hole_n_one ... Years ago, I studied how these buildings were designed: state of the art at the time. My confusion in seeing the fascade ... is the level of, and amount of debris. Considering the amount of materials used to construct the building, there HAS TO BE MORE DEBRIS ... unless the building vaporized. I think it must have.

12 posted on 09/14/2001 9:33:15 PM PDT by patricia
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To: patricia
unless the building vaporized. I think it must have.

That seems to be the general consensus......

that's what it looked like on T.V.......it simply disintergrated before our eyes.

13 posted on 09/14/2001 10:11:26 PM PDT by hole_n_one
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To: vannrox
Is this the lobby of the WTC?
14 posted on 09/14/2001 10:17:16 PM PDT by BunnySlippers
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To: patricia
Below the entire complex were five basement levels -- the high-ceilinged shopping mall, the concourses for five subway lines, parking garages, loading docks, the machine rooms, etc. If you see 40 feet tall wreckage aboveground, reckon as much or more inthe concourses. A lot of matter is embedded in the lower surrounding buildings, or has already been cleared from the streets outside the plaza. Concrete pulverized to powder and blew away -- it doesm't burn. The remaining fraction looks to be mostly metal.
15 posted on 09/14/2001 10:43:02 PM PDT by Norman Conquest
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To: hole_n_one, WTCgraphics
Linking to WTCgraphics list.

Type to:WTCgraphics in the search box.

16 posted on 09/16/2001 11:54:18 AM PDT by Howlin
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