[HN Gopher] The World Trade Center under construction through ph...
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The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979
Author : kinderjaje
Score : 172 points
Date : 2025-10-07 00:40 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
| kinderjaje wrote:
| > The material expenditures on the towers were enormous; 192,000
| tons of steel, 425,000 cubic yards of concrete, 43,600 windows
| with 572,000 square feet of glass, 1,143,000 square feet of
| aluminum sheet, 198 miles of ductwork, and 12,000 miles of
| electrical cable.
|
| The towers also provided an extraordinary employment opportunity
| for the construction workers of the region. More than 3,500
| people were employed continuously on-site during construction.
|
| > A total of 10,000 people were involved in its construction.
| Tragically, 60 people were killed during construction.
|
| During their lifetimes the towers were host to the birth of 17
| babies and 19 murders.
|
| Fifty thousand people called the towers their place of work and
| on many days tens of thousands visited.
| chistev wrote:
| Interested in Reading about those murders.
| n1b0m wrote:
| I couldn't find any evidence of the birth of 17 babies. The
| claim may be confused with the approximately 100 babies born to
| women whose husbands died in the 9/11 attacks.
|
| I also couldn't find any evidence for the 19 murders. Six
| people were killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,
| which was an act of terrorism. Plus 9/11.
| jmulho wrote:
| There was at least one additional murder. Louis DiBono, who
| held a lucrative contract to fireproof the steel beams of the
| towers, was murdered in the parking lot under the North tower
| on Oct 4, 1990. John Gotti was convicted for the murder (and
| four other murders). The FBI, eavesdropping on Gotti,
| overheard the order, but misheard the name and thus failed to
| warn DiBono. Also, there was no video surveillance or
| witnesses, and the body wasn't found for three days, all
| indicating a lack of security. The Feb 26, 1993, bombing was
| apparently done from the same parking lot 2+ years later.
|
| https://npdf1.org/crime-scene-world-trade-center/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti
| chistev wrote:
| Jules Naudet 3 hour footage of the collapse of the WTC, following
| the firemen before and after the towers got hit.
|
| https://youtu.be/CqzbHEfX3o8?si=4wfuiD94x9p11sj0
| whycome wrote:
| Did anyone film with film cameras that day? We could get really
| really high res footage out of that.
| fidotron wrote:
| Tangentially:
|
| > The vision was meant to use the trade facility and urban
| renewal as tools to clear and revitalize what had become a
| "commercial slum".
|
| What this refers to is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row#New_York_City
|
| Basically you cannot have Akihabara or Shenzhen style electronics
| markets because the sort of people that built the WTC don't like
| their chaotic appearance.
| squeedles wrote:
| Thanks for that. We seem to have lost sight of the importance
| of "commercial biodiversity" in the past 40 or more years of
| continuous M&A concentration.
|
| Happily, I saw a little discussion of it in 2008 when the
| advocates of letting the auto companies fail were pushed back
| by statistics showing how many second and third tier suppliers
| would be destroyed. But the fourth tier, the shenzhen / radio
| alley-type stuff is still ignored. Very similar to how most
| companies want to simply hire skills and assume that they will
| magically appear when in years past, companies took an active
| hand in creating them by having a career development path in-
| house.
|
| Perhaps the AI bubble will be viewed in the future as the last
| gasp of companies that depleted the soil that they grew in and
| now struggle to survive without anyone that knows how to do the
| work anymore. Maybe LLMs will be all that remains, our Moai.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| There's plenty of "commercial biodiversity" left on Canal
| Street. And it's pretty gross.
| crote wrote:
| It's a shame the same logic wasn't applied in maintaining a
| healthy root-level auto company ecosystem. Having a single
| megacorp at the top inevitably makes it too big to fail. On
| the other hand, if there are dozens of smaller car companies,
| the failure of any one of them is insignificant to the wider
| ecosystem.
|
| A company that _knows_ it is too big to fail will inevitably
| lead to mismanagement. After all, why bother saving for a
| rainy day when you can count on corporate welfare handouts?
| Why bother reducing your risks when you can always rely on a
| bailout? You can _never_ lose, so the obvious thing to do is
| to bet as big as possible in an attempt to create as much
| short-term "shareholder value" as possible.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think you can expand this to "finance" more broadly. This
| essay by the CCRU from 30 years ago is really interesting and
| basically explores the phenomenon of marketplaces turning into
| organized financial spaces as a space becomes more
| capitalistic. Let's not forget what the WTC is/was: a major
| focal point of global capitalism, not just another building.
|
| http://www.ccru.net/archive/markets.htm
|
| _In 'highly developed' economies the anarchy of concrete
| market-places has been replaced by the securitized space of the
| shopping mall (interiorized, guarded, and surveilled). Instead
| of dark and crowded alleys, lined by open stalls - which
| encourage a multiplicity of tactile interactions - the mall
| substitutes shop windows and brightly lit retail displays._
| nroets wrote:
| It's not about looks but efficient use of land: Manhattan was
| (and still is) the financial capital of the world. It had the
| most valuable real estate in the world. Radio Row was a poor
| use of real estate.
|
| Before the Chinese traded electronics in Shenzhen, they traded
| it in Hong Kong. Yes, as Hong Kong transformed into a financial
| center, it got rid of the electronics traders.
| fidotron wrote:
| > It had the most valuable real estate in the world. Radio
| Row was a poor use of real estate.
|
| So why did they force a sale price on the people there?
|
| If as finance people we believe in market forces they should
| have bought the stores out at market prices.
|
| It's another heads-we-win-tails-you-lose situation.
| janeroe wrote:
| > It's not about looks but efficient use of land
|
| Right, confiscation from private owners to use it for
| erection of a building no one needs is a very efficient use
| of land. The project will require astronomical up front
| expenses, will stay vacant for almost 2 decades, and have
| endless problems until its last day (fires, terrorist acts,
| issues with the structure). But who cares, it's efficiency we
| are talking about.
| crote wrote:
| The White House and Central Park are a poor use of real
| estate as well. Imagine how much money you could make if you
| developed it into a new Kowloon Walled City!
|
| Besides, didn't the Twin Towers have a massive occupancy
| problem? I recall that being the reason why so many
| government entities were forced to move there...
| Finnucane wrote:
| 'poor use of land' meaning 'not being used for the benefit of
| wealthy people.'
| potato3732842 wrote:
| > because the sort of people that built the WTC don't like
| their chaotic appearance.
|
| And their counterparts in government hate it because chaos is
| inefficient (because people have rights) to impose their will
| on (regulate) so even if you don't build WTC there becomes a
| regulatory environment where nothing organic can get done.
| jeswin wrote:
| The Twin Towers sort of represented the height of American power
| and prestige, and their fall kicked off the decline. From its
| peak in the unipolar 90s, a series of expensive misadventures
| that began after the towers fell diverted critical funds from
| development (against the backdrop of China's inevitable rise and
| industrial capacity), into conflict and war far away.
| honkostani wrote:
| Its fall showed, that cultural relativism and universal
| liberalism, where just western delusions. Socialism was a dead
| ideology by then, but this really attacked western values,
| insofar, that a dried husk of a imperialist religious ideology,
| revived with western demand for natural resources (oil) would
| rather engage in cultural warfare upon western values and
| society then trying to fix itself.
|
| It was a ringing bell, bringing the attention back to the old
| ugly worldorder of great games, land-empires and bloody
| conquest and the inability to isolate from hostile ideologies,
| even if you are the usa and living on a giant island. Bush went
| to iraq and the failure to build any working state there-
| showed not only the failure of neoncons, but also of the whole
| "all cultures are equal" and academic impotence. There
| explanation models had nothing for this but tired rehashes of
| colonial/anti-colonial ideology, no predictions, no real help,
| just "belief in universal values and western culture, and
| righton" - and that was it. No help for the 2 billion stuck in
| religious ember, not real analysis to free the wasted geniuses
| trapped under burkas. Silence, ideology and absence, thats
| whats left.
| mindslight wrote:
| Some of this rings true, but it makes way too many
| speculative assertions about the future stated as if they're
| simply done deals. It also uncritically channels many memes
| from the destructionist movement presently "leading" the US,
| rather than acknowledging that movement as part of the "
| _cultural warfare upon western values_ ".
| RajT88 wrote:
| It is - seriously - no wonder they got destroyed. NYC is a
| symbol, and the towers were a recognizable icon in the skyline.
|
| There's a high number of coincidences about the towers getting
| destroyed. It's no conspiracy, it's because the towers and NYC
| meant something in the eyes of the world with regards to the
| USA.
|
| Just rattling off a few of the wild ones:
|
| The episode of The Lone Gunmen which predicted an attack with a
| plane on the towers.
|
| The Sega Master System game (I forget the name, but I own it)
| where it depicts a missile hitting the towers on the opening
| screen. It's pixels with little wings, and super spooky in
| retrospect.
|
| The Dream Theater live album released on 9/11 which showed the
| NYC skyline burning.
|
| There's so much stuff, I almost don't blame the conspiracy
| theorists. But they have the causality backwards. They also
| really like to ignore the fact that 8 years earlier somebody
| tried to blow up the towers and killed 6 people...
| wpm wrote:
| What wondrous things you'll be able to do with computer
| graphics! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu1bivgaiVw
| Ccecil wrote:
| The album for "Party Music" from Boots Riley's band "The
| Coup" was scheduled to be released in September and they had
| to delay it due to the cover having a picture of the WTC
| exploding [1]
|
| Tom Clancy's book "Debt of Honor" is very similar in a spooky
| way as well. Including the hesitation to shoot down
| commercial airliners being used as weapons. [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Music [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_of_Honor
| lisbbb wrote:
| I recall reading an article sometime around 1999 that
| mentioned a ban on holes being drilled between floors in the
| towers for running network wiring because they were beginning
| to worry about structural integrity. That article was
| disappeared after the attacks. I know I read it, but the
| information totally disappeared.
| rjmunro wrote:
| The article "Mother Earth, Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson
| (https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/), written in 1996
| says "The collapse of the lighthouse must have been
| astonishing, like watching the World Trade Center fall over."
|
| That totally freaked me out when I re-read the article a few
| years later.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Somewhat supporting your point, the towers were literally
| bombed in '93 with the intent of toppling them:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombin.
| ..
|
| I imagine this terrorist attack inspired some of the art on
| your list.
| RajT88 wrote:
| So the videogame I mentioned was from 87! I think... Around
| then for sure. Definitely late 80's since it was for 8 bit
| Sega.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The majority of development in the US is private. It hasn't
| been redirected to war. What's primarily happened is that
| Americans decided that the '90s were the perfect decade and if
| you build anything past that you are "ruining the"
| [community|environment|neighborhood].
|
| Everything new is "gross" for the people who are on their fifth
| year of therapy with no end in sight. It's always someone
| else's fault but don't change anything because community
| character is the most important thing.
| mlsu wrote:
| Even as the true "community character" -- the people who live
| in the community -- are pushed out by the price required to
| live there.
|
| Some of the best "preserved" (via this 'build nothing change
| nothing' tactic) communities in my expensive socal city are
| dead. They were turned from diverse beach communities into
| dead information technology/finance monoliths.
| lisbbb wrote:
| The 1970s weren't exactly a prosperous time period. The total
| end of the gold standard marked the real decline.
|
| China's rise wasn't "inevitable" it was underwritten when Nixon
| went to China and they subsequently got their most favored
| trading nation status.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I couldn't help feel the same.
|
| Looking at where America is right now. It seems to make a
| downfall.
| N70Phone wrote:
| > Looking at where America is right now. It seems to make a
| downfall.
|
| It's been happening for years now. 'America', the idea, died
| the moment the 2nd plane hit the towers.
|
| People saw that happen, and were so fearful they immediately
| opened their hearts to fascism.
|
| 2025 is merely the year where all of Bush's fascist policies
| & Obama/Biden's failure to clean it up metastasized into the
| overt fascism that hurts everyone in a country & eventually
| destroys the country itself.
| api wrote:
| I firmly believe that the 9/11 terrorists won. They got what
| they wanted, which is exactly what you describe. They also
| destroyed the optimism and energy of our culture. I lived
| through that time, and we have never recovered.
|
| What we should have done is, as a symbolic act, rebuild the
| towers exactly as they were (with some structural improvements
| maybe) and go about our business. We should have gone after the
| terrorists as an international police action and not much more.
|
| That would have been a symbol of true strength. "No, your
| little act of vandalism won't have any effect on us at all. We
| are above that." Be like the "wall" archetype in fiction, the
| huge guy someone punches as hard as they can and they barely
| notice.
|
| Instead we showed stupidity and weakness disguised as strength,
| something we're now wallowing in with a whole culture revolving
| around fake strength and compensatory fake masculinity.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > the World Financial Center, designed by Cesar Pelli, and
| several apartment buildings were built on this new land.
|
| Now known as Brookfield place. Yet another ill-advised re-
| branding. I believe this was done after the GFC to attract non-
| finance companies.
| netesh wrote:
| People who like this might enjoy the amazing film Man On Wire
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM
| eigenhombre wrote:
| Highly recommended... I found it quite beautiful and moving,
| and it's the only film I've felt compelled to write a blog
| post[1] about. "Seeing the film (made just last year)
| transforms the memory of the Towers from one of trauma to
| something more like transcendence."
|
| [1] https://johnj.com/posts/man-on-wire/ [2009]
|
| Edit: add year
| fschuett wrote:
| Was the WTC 7 / Salomon Brothers Building part of the same
| construction?
| aerodog wrote:
| I had the fortune of being at the top of the twin towers as a
| child in the 90s. A total shame what Larry Silverstein
| coordinated against these fantastic structures.
| fnord77 wrote:
| They were so stunning to look at from the outside. They were so
| large they didn't seem real.
|
| I worked for a bit on the 95 or 96th floor. Inside they were less
| impressive. The lowish ceiling and skinny windows made it feel
| confining. To me, in the 90s, they felt old and dated on the
| inside.
| pcurve wrote:
| "Tragically, 60 people were killed during construction.
|
| During their lifetimes the towers were host to the birth of 17
| babies and 19 murders"
|
| That is unusually high number of death during construction.
|
| After 25 years, I still get emotional looking at these imageries.
| The emotion is raw. I'm still mad that this happened.
| avhception wrote:
| I'm still mad, and I'm not even American. Even over here in
| Germany, it was a massive shock wave that went through society
| and I still remember the day it happened vividly. The effects
| in society are felt to this day.
| UltraSane wrote:
| as an American I very much want to live in the reality where
| Gore won and 9/11 didn't happen.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Are you implying Gore winning would've meant 9/11 wouldn't
| have happened?
| tempestn wrote:
| Not the parent, and I'm not saying it definitely wouldn't
| have happened (I have no idea), but it's at least
| possible. There was advance intelligence around the event
| that might have been treated differently by a different
| administration.
|
| Even if it had happened, the response would also have
| been different.
| chistev wrote:
| What do you think the different response would have been?
| tempestn wrote:
| I have no idea; I'm just saying that with different
| people in charge, they wouldn't have reacted in exactly
| the same way.
|
| If I had to guess, I'd say at least no Iraq war, if we
| consider that part of the response. Patriot Act probably
| would have looked different. I expect there still would
| have been military action in Afghanistan, but likely with
| differences as well.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| In Richard Clarke's book he details the intelligence
| community's multiple warnings to the new Bush
| administration that spring and summer. They were ignored.
|
| As Gore came from the Clinton admin he and the people
| around him would have had a lot more experience dealing
| with and familiar with the threats and actors, who were
| already known.
| UltraSane wrote:
| No
| squidbeak wrote:
| Are you asserting that Al Qaeda liked Gore enough to
| suspend their vendetta?
| natebc wrote:
| They're asserting that they want to live in a world where
| two things are true.
|
| - Gore was declared winner of the 2000 presidential
| election
|
| - the WTC wasn't attacked on September 11th, 2001.
|
| the two don't have to be connected to be wishes.
| UltraSane wrote:
| No
| tempestn wrote:
| If Gore had won, maybe McCain could have been President
| after him, and the Republican party could've gone in a very
| different direction too.
|
| If you enjoy these kinds of hypotheticals, check out the
| series For All Mankind on apple tv.
| timcobb wrote:
| One could argue that Osama bin Laden did succeed in
| destroying the US if not the entire Western order.
| 93po wrote:
| The US did exactly what he wanted them to.
|
| He wanted to radicalize Muslims worldwide against the West
| and drain American resources through prolonged wars.
|
| It's also interesting how infrequently Americans know OBL's
| motivations for the 9/11 attacks. A big part of it was the
| American support of Israel, and OBL's belief that this
| would lead to further oppression of Muslim people in
| Palestine.
|
| He did terrible things but was pretty accurate in his
| predictions.
| bamboozled wrote:
| OBL hated Palestine ?
| Hackbraten wrote:
| "this" == "the American support of Israel"
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| For context, three of the tallest skyscrapers at the time were
| constructed in Chicago during roughly this same period.[0]
| (Originally known as the Hancock, Standard Oil, and Sears
| buildings, since renamed). Chicago was also the second largest
| U.S. city at the time, and I've often thought that the WTC
| construction was in part motivated by a sense of civic
| competition between the two cities.
|
| _" Of Chicago's five tallest buildings, three were completed
| within a 5-year span between 1969 and 1974."_
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_C..
| .
| grishka wrote:
| I'm not an American, I've only ever been to NYC once in 2014, and
| I was only 8 when 9/11 happened, but somehow, seeing that skyline
| with those two towers still in it, evokes the feeling of simpler,
| friendlier times. Even though in the 90s, my own country was
| going through the troubles of recovering from 70 years of
| socialism -- it was anything _but_ simpler friendlier times.
| teiferer wrote:
| Yeah, it was a facade. That facade fell in 2001.
|
| (I'm not saying this was good. It was a terrible tragedy. The
| attack itself obviously, and then what followed as well.)
| tempestn wrote:
| I don't know if I'd call it a facade. More of a lull. I was
| 20 in 2001, and growing up in the 90s it very much felt like
| we had entered "post-history". Yes, the world wasn't perfect,
| there was still conflict and social problems, but they were
| better than at any time in the past, and clearly getting
| better (along with technology) all the time.
|
| I was slightly too young to really remember the cold war, and
| my only hazy related memory is positive: the fall of the
| Berlin wall. So, major geopolitical conflict was a thing of
| the past.
|
| Of course in reality, 10-15 years of relative peace (and of
| course there was still regional conflict) and social
| stability (though of course there were many unaddressed
| problems) is just a blip, but especially growing up in that
| era, it didn't feel that way at the time. I think that might
| be why so many millennial and Gen-x folks feel particularly
| disillusioned with the state of the world now.
| bamboozled wrote:
| It's true, the 90s definitely seemed like wildly optimistic
| times and technology seemed to be unlocking the "common
| man" in really great ways. I never had the feeling things
| would go backwards.
| tonymet wrote:
| it was very real
| mallowdram wrote:
| Article neglects that the WTC defied NYFD building codes on
| egress. If the code was applied as existing in 1966, it would
| require 8 or 9 fireproof staircases. Instead Rockefeller asked
| for and got a pass and the building instead had three staircases
| embedded in six layers of drywall, which is far else than the
| then standard fireproofing (brick encased). Not only that, they
| had non-standard transit corridors that wove egress routes around
| the two sky lobbies.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Honest question , would it have changed much ?
| mallowdram wrote:
| I suspect so. The case was made in 102 minutes, a NY Times
| book detailing how 18 people on or above the South Tower's
| impact zone managed to escape in one of the partially
| collapsed staircases. Were the stairs built to firecode specs
| in place in 1966, and not in the flimsy manner expedited by
| Rockefeller, these stairs would have easily survived intact
| long enough for many more than 18 to survive.
| gdubs wrote:
| My parents worked and had most of their friends in Manhattan when
| I was a little kid -- this was back in the 1980s. I have vivid
| memories to this day of passing the World Trade Center and being
| completely overwhelmed by the scale of it.
|
| Most high rises taper, but these towers just went straight up as
| rectangles. And the effect was almost dizzying. They were just so
| tall.
|
| I used to love drawing the NYC skyline as a kid -- such an iconic
| thing. New York used to be much grittier, but I loved the energy
| of it as a kid. Was an incredible thing to experience.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I just visited NYC for the first time a few months ago, and had
| the most amazing time, one hell of a city and I can't wait to
| get back.
|
| I could ramble for hours about all the things I loved about the
| trip, but one of the things that stuck out was all the young
| kids taking the subway by themselves or in small packs of
| friends out pretty late etc. They all seemed so much more
| street smart and independent than my own similar aged kids (we
| live in a quiet neighborhood in Seattle). I also grew up fairly
| sheltered in the suburbs where I had very little exposure to
| the "real world" as they say...
|
| I'd be fascinated to hear more about what it's like to grow up
| in such a massive city.
| mcast wrote:
| The subway systems is one of the greatest socioeconomic
| equalizers in NYC. During rush hour, you'll share a subway
| car with a homeless man, an ER doctor wearing scrubs, a
| fashion model wearing YSL, a finance bro, and a food delivery
| worker. It's an amazing city for people watching.
| _0xdd wrote:
| I remember my grandfather telling me when I was younger that many
| nice buildings were demolished to make way for the WTC. He worked
| nearby, so he saw the entire construction from start-to-finish.
| superfunny wrote:
| I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, about twenty miles west.
| From the highest point in our town, you could make out the
| outline of the WTC, far off in the distance.
|
| In 2001, I lived in Chicago, and I took a trip to Italy in
| September of 2001. I remember flying into Newark airport early
| that month, and marveling (as I always did) about the New York
| skyline, including the Empire State Building and the WTC.
|
| I returned eight days later, on the first day that flights
| resumed after 9/11, and I remember flying into Newark again, and
| there was still smoking climbing into the air around where the
| WTC once stood.
| bambax wrote:
| I visited Manhattan in 1990 and took photos on top of the
| towers, and also from the Staten Island boat shuttle. I thought
| then and still think now that those towers looked magnificent.
|
| They should have been rebuilt identically.
| 93po wrote:
| I looked at interior photos of the towers and those 18 inch wide
| windows are _terrible_. Did everyone hate those? It 's a tragedy
| to see such beautiful views outside those windows that look like
| prison bars.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The article does not mention it (that I noticed), but the lower
| floors were occupied and in use before the upper floors were
| completed. My father was a beat cop in Manhattan in the late 60s
| and early 70s, he tells me that the construction crew took him up
| the elevator to a floor where the windows had not yet been
| installed, while businesses were working in the lower floors.
|
| Dad also bemoaned the loss of Radio Row to build the WTC, as he
| was a big Ham enthusiast as a kid.
| nixass wrote:
| Found this sub recently as WTC buildings for some weird reasons
| fascinate me in rather uncanny way, whether as a 911 event or
| before that
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TwinTowersInPhotos/s/cnyHzBE47C
|
| Some photos form Sun Microsystems offices inside the WTC
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TwinTowersInPhotos/s/qYMuq6LG4W
| trollbridge wrote:
| Somehow, the producer of _Godspell_ got permission to film one of
| their musical dance scenes on top of one of the unfinished
| towers. A good writeup of how that happened is here:
| https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/godspell-and-construct...
|
| The actual scene from the movie:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6d0ASmvfs
|
| The camera work for that was stunning.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I saw a documentary that made the case that the Twin Towers'
| design was compromised from the beginning. The original design
| called for pillars at the corners, but the designers wanted open
| floor plans, so the city could be seen from anywhere in the
| offices. (Makes me wonder if the terrorists did more research
| than we would think)
|
| I'm sure there are some civil engineers in here who would just
| love to weigh in so now I wait. :)
| justonceokay wrote:
| I hsve a hard time believing the history would be greatly
| altered if the planes did not cause the buildings to fall.
| prmph wrote:
| This might be an unpopular opinion, but, apart from that 9/11 was
| a terrible act, I think the twin towers kind of dominated the NYC
| skyline in a way that was not good.
|
| By themselves they were impressive, but, jutting out of the
| ground as they did, without peer, made for a jarring skyline. The
| fact that they did not taper and were twin made it worse.
|
| The new tower is much better integrated into NYC skyline
| aesthetically. A shame I did not visit before returning to Ghana
| a couple of years ago.
| tempestn wrote:
| Not sure why you're being down voted for an aesthetic opinion
| for which you gave a logical explanation. I'm not sure whether
| I agree or not, but the comment seemed fine to me.
| lisbbb wrote:
| A lot of public works projects and big construction projects were
| taking place during those years because the economy was not doing
| well. They were "jobs programs" I guess you could say.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The book Men Of Steel is about the company that erected the steel
| for the towers. It's highly worth reading and it talks at length
| about some of the challenges in not only the erection of the
| buildings, but the problems caused by the sheer scale of it.
|
| The four cranes on each tower that you can see in the photos were
| a scaling up of a proven design and it didn't scale up well. They
| had tons of problems with them breaking down.
|
| There were also some plans to do automated welding that came to
| naught. They had to fall back to manual welding after they
| couldn't get the automated process to work.
| windows2020 wrote:
| The Twin Towers 2 concept, which is mostly the originals with a
| few additional floors, would have been a more fitting
| replacement.
| tukunjil wrote:
| obl made clear his cz for that attk on his "letter to America"
| but still America runs by zio lobbyists and funds israel to kill
| people in medl est and to complete their ethnic cleansig prjct!
| https://ceu.su/letter_to_america.html
| rossant wrote:
| I visited New York in 1997 and was fascinated by the Twin Towers.
| Coming from a mid-sized city in France, they seemed unbelievably
| tall. We went there, but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to
| visit because of some construction work. I was quite disappointed
| and swore to myself that I'd come back another time. Needless to
| say, that never happened.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Seeing the pictures just makes me sad.
|
| I remember having a beer in the restaurant at the top in the late
| 90's. I wish I'd taken some photos.
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