10 ms·

The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

240 points by kinderjaje 1y ago

kinderjaje 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
  Interested in Reading about those murders.
- n1b0m 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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://npdf1.org/crime-scene-world-trade-center/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti
chistev 1y ago
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 https://youtu.be/CqzbHEfX3o8?si=4wfuiD94x9p11sj0
- whycome 1y ago
  Did anyone film with film cameras that day? We could get really really high res footage out of that.
- gregsadetsky 1y ago
  thanks for the link - fascinating to read about the origins of this footage [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_and_G%C3%A9d%C3%A9on_Naudet#9/11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_and_G%C3%A9d%C3%A9on_Nau...
  - chistev 1y ago
    You're welcome
fidotron 1y ago
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 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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    There's plenty of "commercial biodiversity" left on Canal Street. And it's pretty gross.
  - crote 1y ago
    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.
jeswin 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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".
    - honkostani 1y ago
      It is already final. You can not be stuck in medieval times in a world with nuclear weapons and proliferation. Had Israel not taken out the reactors of Iraq and Syria, ISIS and Iraq would have nukes today. Which would result (because non-reasonable actors aka fanatics longing for the afterlife) in a regional exchange. The middle east is already gone. They will nuke one another, rather sooner then later. And their governments know. They desperately embrace the surveillance state as stabilizer, move there centers of government out of population centers expected to implode in senseless rebellion and anarchy again and again - they want to build cities optimized to escape nuclear retribution, for the day when some of their madmen lob a device at Israel. They celebrate right now in Ghaza and chant for more violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yaBgGzANc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yaBgGzANc And that boiling cauldron of madness is wide spread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdlsHaRD1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdlsHaRD1k
jgalt212 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
People who like this might enjoy the amazing film Man On Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM
- eigenhombre 1y ago
  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/ https://johnj.com/posts/man-on-wire/ [2009] Edit: add year
- whartung 1y ago
  Similarly, there was the Robert Zemeckis movie "The Walk" which is a dramatization of the same event. After watching, I felt the movie was as much a tribute to the WTC as it was about this wire walker. It's a beautiful film.
fschuett 1y ago
Was the WTC 7 / Salomon Brothers Building part of the same construction?
- epc 1y ago
  No, IIRC the Port Authority owned the land but leased development out to a developer, Larry Silverstein. Coincidentally Silverstein leased the rest of the WTC complex from the PANYNJ in July? 2001.
aerodog 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
"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.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- avhception 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    as an American I very much want to live in the reality where Gore won and 9/11 didn't happen.
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      Are you implying Gore winning would've meant 9/11 wouldn't have happened?
      - tempestn 1y ago
        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 1y ago
        What do you think the different response would have been?
PopAlongKid 1y ago
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_Chicago#1960s%E2%80%931970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_C...
grishka 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    I don't know if I'd call it a façade. 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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
    it was very real
mallowdram 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Honest question , would it have changed much ?
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    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.
    - bamboozled 1y ago
      I guess we're talking about not just brick, but reinforced concrete infused brick ? Anyway I'd be interested to read more about it, thanks.
      - mallowdram 1y ago
        Right, it's fireproof brick, isolated steel stairs, pressurized air, 120 m fireproof doors.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  This rules aren't there for no reason.
gdubs 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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.
ludamn 1y ago
That looks beautiful, it might be a silly question but why hasn't anyone pushed for rebuilding them? It's kinda sad to see NY without these towers, it's a silent reminder that terror once won. I know it would probably be very expensive, but I wonder why nobody thought of rebuilding these, even if as a symbolic token that people can reemerge after tragedy.
nixass 1y ago
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 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 https://www.reddit.com/r/TwinTowersInPhotos/s/qYMuq6LG4W
trollbridge 1y ago
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-construction-of-twin-towers.html https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/godspell-and-construct... The actual scene from the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6d0ASmvfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6d0ASmvfs The camera work for that was stunning.
phendrenad2 1y ago
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 1y ago
  I hsve a hard time believing the history would be greatly altered if the planes did not cause the buildings to fall.
prmph 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - bluebarbet 1y ago
    They were downvoted because the downvoters disagreed with the opinion. I so wish we could all agree to not do that.
lisbbb 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
The Twin Towers 2 concept, which is mostly the originals with a few additional floors, would have been a more fitting replacement.
tukunjil 1y ago
[flagged]
rossant 1y ago
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 1y ago
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.
harmmonica 1y ago
I can't quite describe the visceral thrill I'd get seeing the towers starting from when I was a little kid. And whether it was staring at the folks dining in Windows on the World from across the way (too "fancy" for us to go while it was still open!); staring up those endless vertical lines from the plaza below; catching a brief glimpse as you walked east to west somewhere uptown; or seeing them anchor the full skyline from a bridge or flight, the thrill only increased with each subsequent viewing. A truly special piece of NYC for someone who only knew the city with them. And it was truly sad having to get used to it without them.
michaelcampbell 1y ago
I lived/worked near WTC's and used the subways under it many, many times. I had a short friendship with Marshall Brain (How Stuff Works, et. al.) in ~1993, and he and I decided to meet in the WTC square to go have lunch one day. He was early, and based on "stepping off" one side of one of the towers and knowing the # of stories, he mentally calculated how many Zebulon, NC's would fit inside them. If memory serves, he was either living there at the time or from there. I had moved to Atlanta when the towers were hit, and although my closest colleagues from NY were all OK after 9/11, I'm sure there was at least someone I'd known or worked with that perished.
padolsey 1y ago
Beautiful images in some ways, but so raw and stomach-churning in others. I am not American but feel sick to this day at the thoughts of these events. On the day of 9/11, I was 11 and went to my IT class that afternoon in Sussex, UK. Our teacher set a task that we thought was hypothetical. They said something had happened in NYC and asked for us to put our investigative hats on and find information about it online. I suppose, in a way, it made sense as a task, to treat it as an exercise. It slowly came to realization that this was a real thing. Looking at these images now, the people in the foregrounds in 1970s attire, going about their days, it feels like a nostalgic optimism. Earth-shattering loss followed it. The ephemerality of optimism for our pockets of lived humanity in this lifetime are not to be taken for granted. We should remember and value what positive and pain-free times we are able to each be priveleged enough to enjoy. Time is short.
yanko 1y ago
Did they planted the building demolition explosives used to destroy the building at 11 Sep initially at the building stage?
- abbycurtis33 1y ago
  No, it was the art students.
nullorempty 1y ago
Looking at all those steel beams I have only one thought...

240 points by kinderjaje 1y ago

> 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 1y ago
Interested in Reading about those murders.
n1b0m 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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://npdf1.org/crime-scene-world-trade-center/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gotti

chistev 1y ago

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 https://youtu.be/CqzbHEfX3o8?si=4wfuiD94x9p11sj0

whycome 1y ago
Did anyone film with film cameras that day? We could get really really high res footage out of that.
gregsadetsky 1y ago
thanks for the link - fascinating to read about the origins of this footage [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_and_G%C3%A9d%C3%A9on_Naudet#9/11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_and_G%C3%A9d%C3%A9on_Nau...
- chistev 1y ago
  You're welcome

fidotron 1y ago

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 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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  There's plenty of "commercial biodiversity" left on Canal Street. And it's pretty gross.
- crote 1y ago
  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.

jeswin 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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".
  - honkostani 1y ago
    It is already final. You can not be stuck in medieval times in a world with nuclear weapons and proliferation. Had Israel not taken out the reactors of Iraq and Syria, ISIS and Iraq would have nukes today. Which would result (because non-reasonable actors aka fanatics longing for the afterlife) in a regional exchange. The middle east is already gone. They will nuke one another, rather sooner then later. And their governments know. They desperately embrace the surveillance state as stabilizer, move there centers of government out of population centers expected to implode in senseless rebellion and anarchy again and again - they want to build cities optimized to escape nuclear retribution, for the day when some of their madmen lob a device at Israel. They celebrate right now in Ghaza and chant for more violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yaBgGzANc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yaBgGzANc And that boiling cauldron of madness is wide spread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdlsHaRD1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdlsHaRD1k

jgalt212 1y ago

> 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 1y ago

People who like this might enjoy the amazing film Man On Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM

eigenhombre 1y ago
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/ https://johnj.com/posts/man-on-wire/ [2009] Edit: add year
whartung 1y ago
Similarly, there was the Robert Zemeckis movie "The Walk" which is a dramatization of the same event. After watching, I felt the movie was as much a tribute to the WTC as it was about this wire walker. It's a beautiful film.

fschuett 1y ago

Was the WTC 7 / Salomon Brothers Building part of the same construction?

epc 1y ago
No, IIRC the Port Authority owned the land but leased development out to a developer, Larry Silverstein. Coincidentally Silverstein leased the rest of the WTC complex from the PANYNJ in July? 2001.

aerodog 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago

"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.

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avhception 1y ago
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 1y ago
  as an American I very much want to live in the reality where Gore won and 9/11 didn't happen.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    Are you implying Gore winning would've meant 9/11 wouldn't have happened?
    - tempestn 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        What do you think the different response would have been?

PopAlongKid 1y ago

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_Chicago#1960s%E2%80%931970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_C...

grishka 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  I don't know if I'd call it a façade. 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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  it was very real

mallowdram 1y ago

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 1y ago
Honest question , would it have changed much ?
- mallowdram 1y ago
  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.
  - bamboozled 1y ago
    I guess we're talking about not just brick, but reinforced concrete infused brick ? Anyway I'd be interested to read more about it, thanks.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      Right, it's fireproof brick, isolated steel stairs, pressurized air, 120 m fireproof doors.
1718627440 1y ago
This rules aren't there for no reason.

gdubs 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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.

ludamn 1y ago

That looks beautiful, it might be a silly question but why hasn't anyone pushed for rebuilding them? It's kinda sad to see NY without these towers, it's a silent reminder that terror once won. I know it would probably be very expensive, but I wonder why nobody thought of rebuilding these, even if as a symbolic token that people can reemerge after tragedy.

nixass 1y ago

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 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 https://www.reddit.com/r/TwinTowersInPhotos/s/qYMuq6LG4W

trollbridge 1y ago

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-construction-of-twin-towers.html https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/godspell-and-construct... The actual scene from the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6d0ASmvfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6d0ASmvfs The camera work for that was stunning.

phendrenad2 1y ago

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 1y ago
I hsve a hard time believing the history would be greatly altered if the planes did not cause the buildings to fall.

prmph 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- bluebarbet 1y ago
  They were downvoted because the downvoters disagreed with the opinion. I so wish we could all agree to not do that.

lisbbb 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago

The Twin Towers 2 concept, which is mostly the originals with a few additional floors, would have been a more fitting replacement.

tukunjil 1y ago

[flagged]

rossant 1y ago

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 1y ago

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.

harmmonica 1y ago

I can't quite describe the visceral thrill I'd get seeing the towers starting from when I was a little kid. And whether it was staring at the folks dining in Windows on the World from across the way (too "fancy" for us to go while it was still open!); staring up those endless vertical lines from the plaza below; catching a brief glimpse as you walked east to west somewhere uptown; or seeing them anchor the full skyline from a bridge or flight, the thrill only increased with each subsequent viewing. A truly special piece of NYC for someone who only knew the city with them. And it was truly sad having to get used to it without them.

michaelcampbell 1y ago

I lived/worked near WTC's and used the subways under it many, many times. I had a short friendship with Marshall Brain (How Stuff Works, et. al.) in ~1993, and he and I decided to meet in the WTC square to go have lunch one day. He was early, and based on "stepping off" one side of one of the towers and knowing the # of stories, he mentally calculated how many Zebulon, NC's would fit inside them. If memory serves, he was either living there at the time or from there. I had moved to Atlanta when the towers were hit, and although my closest colleagues from NY were all OK after 9/11, I'm sure there was at least someone I'd known or worked with that perished.

padolsey 1y ago

Beautiful images in some ways, but so raw and stomach-churning in others. I am not American but feel sick to this day at the thoughts of these events. On the day of 9/11, I was 11 and went to my IT class that afternoon in Sussex, UK. Our teacher set a task that we thought was hypothetical. They said something had happened in NYC and asked for us to put our investigative hats on and find information about it online. I suppose, in a way, it made sense as a task, to treat it as an exercise. It slowly came to realization that this was a real thing. Looking at these images now, the people in the foregrounds in 1970s attire, going about their days, it feels like a nostalgic optimism. Earth-shattering loss followed it. The ephemerality of optimism for our pockets of lived humanity in this lifetime are not to be taken for granted. We should remember and value what positive and pain-free times we are able to each be priveleged enough to enjoy. Time is short.

yanko 1y ago

Did they planted the building demolition explosives used to destroy the building at 11 Sep initially at the building stage?

abbycurtis33 1y ago
No, it was the art students.

nullorempty 1y ago

Looking at all those steel beams I have only one thought...