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Subscribe to RSSOn Monday, the World Trade Center surpassed the height of the top floor of the Empire State Building. When it's completed, the tower will eventually rise 1,776 feet high. NBC's Harry Smith reports.
One World Trade Center, the giant monolith being built to replace the twin towers destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, laid claim to the title of New York City's tallest skyscraper on Monday. Workers erected steel columns that made its unfinished skeleton a little over 1,250 feet high, just enough to peak over the roof of the observation deck on the Empire State Building.
The milestone is a preliminary one. Workers are still adding floors to the so-called "Freedom Tower" and it isn't expected to reach its full height for at least another year, at which point it is likely to be declared the tallest building in the U.S., and third tallest in the world.
Those bragging rights, though, will carry an asterisk.
Crowning the world's tallest buildings is a little like picking the heavyweight champion in boxing. There is often disagreement about who deserves the belt.
In this case, the issue involves the 408-foot-tall needle that will sit on the tower's roof.
Count it, and the World Trade Center is back on top. Otherwise, it will have to settle for No. 2, after the Willis Tower in Chicago.
"Height is complicated," said Nathaniel Hollister, a spokesman for The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats, a Chicago-based organization considered an authority on such records.
Experts and architects have long disagreed about where to stop measuring super-tall buildings outfitted with masts, spires and antennas that extend far above the roof.
One World Trade Center, also known as Freedom Tower, is set to eclipse the Empire State Building to become the tallest building in New York City at 1,271 feet. At its completion the tower will stand 1,776 feet tall.
Consider the case of the Empire State Building: Measured from the sidewalk to the tip of its needle-like antenna, the granddaddy of all super-tall skyscrapers actually stands 1,454 feet high, well above the mark being surpassed by One World Trade Center on Monday.
Purists, though, say antennas shouldn't count when determining building height.
View 180 degree panoramic image from the 69th floor of the WTC
An antenna, they say, is more like furniture than a piece of architecture. Like a chair sitting on a rooftop, an antenna can be attached or removed. The Empire State Building didn't even get its distinctive antenna until 1952. The record books, as the argument goes, shouldn't change every time someone installs a new satellite dish.
Excluding the antenna brings the Empire State Building's total height to 1,250 feet. That was still high enough to make the skyscraper the world's tallest from 1931 until 1972.
From that height, the Empire State seems to tower over the second tallest completed building in New York, the Bank of America Tower.
Yet, in many record books, the two skyscrapers are separated by just 50 feet.
That's because the tall, thin mast on top of the Bank of America building isn't an antenna, but a decorative spire.
Unlike antennas, record-keepers like spires. It's a tradition that harkens back to a time when the tallest buildings in many European cities were cathedrals. Groups like the Council on Tall Buildings, and Emporis, a building data provider in Germany, both count spires when measuring the total height of a building, even if that spire happens to look exactly like an antenna.
This quirk in the record books has benefited buildings like Chicago's recently opened Trump International Hotel and Tower. It is routinely listed as being between 119 to 139 feet taller than the Empire State Building, thanks to the antenna-like mast that sits on its roof, even though the average person, looking at the two buildings side by side, would probably judge the New York skyscraper to be taller.
The same factors apply to measuring the height of One World Trade Center.
Designs call for the tower's roof to stand at 1,368 feet — the same height as the north tower of the original World Trade Center. The building's roof will be topped with a 408-foot, cable-stayed mast, making the total height of the structure a symbolic 1,776 feet.
Six years since construction began on 1 World Trade Center, the tower will soon surpass the height of the Empire State Building's roof. The iron workers placing and setting each beam in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks say they are building out of a "sense of necessity" and know that the tower, now soaring nearly 1300 feet, will help the nation and the iron workers themselves heal. Many of the workers building the tower helped clean the smoldering debris in the days after the terrorist attack. Harry Smith reports.
So is that needle an antenna or a spire?
"Not sure," wrote Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the building.
The needle will, indeed, function as a broadcast antenna. It is described on the Port Authority's website as an antenna. On the other hand, the structure will have more meat to it than your average antenna, with external cladding encasing the broadcast mast.
Without that spire, One World Trade Center would still be smaller than the Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly known as the Sears Tower, which tops out at 1,451 feet (not including its own antennas).
Debate over which of those buildings can truly claim to be the tallest in the U.S. has been raging for years on Internet message boards frequented by skyscraper enthusiasts.
As for the Council on Tall Buildings, it is leaning toward giving One World Trade the benefit of the doubt.
"This is something we have discussed with the architect," Hollister said. "As we understand it, the needle is an architectural spire which happens to enclose an antenna. We would thus count it as part of the architectural height."
But, he noted, the organization has also chosen to sidestep these types of disputes, somewhat, by recognizing three types of height records: tallest occupied floor, architectural top, and height to the tip.
Hollister also pointed out that, technically speaking, One World Trade Center isn't a record-holder in any category yet, as it is still unfinished.
"A project is not considered a building until it is topped out, fully clad, and open for business or at least occupiable," he said.
The debate doesn't quite end there.
Neither of the Willis Tower nor One World Trade are as high as the CN Tower, in Toronto, which stands at 1,815 feet. That structure, however, isn't considered a building at all by most record-keepers, because it is predominantly a television broadcast antenna and observation platform with very little interior space. The tallest manmade structure in the Western Hemisphere will continue to be the 2,063-foot-tall KVLY-TV antenna in Blanchard, N.D.
As for the world's tallest building, the undisputed champion is the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, which opened in 2010 and reaches 2,717 feet.
Not counting about 5 feet of aircraft lights and other equipment perched on top, of course.
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if this building was being built in florida it would have been completed five or six years ago . the unions in NY have been milking this job for over ten years and will milk it another ten years doing the interior. the general contractors doing this project also do projects in florida and they get done sooner and for less money. Take the company skanska they did the meadowlands stadium, and yankee stadium and are remodling the UN building all with union workers they also did seventy precent of downtown atlanta and a lot in tampa. now go and lookup what it took in time and money to do all these projects and they are not a american company so that money goes back to sweden. Ninty nine precent of the work they do is for the goverment, federal ,state, local now whats the problem with that picture and as soon as things get a little slow they fire people the same day I know
everybody does what they got to do to work,,,everybody wants to rule the world while Im healthy I will try to get the work when its available agree to a wage and move on, thankful for what we get either way it will never all be fair, but you got to do it whatever it takes grab what you can , there are bad jobs and corruption but sometimes you can do well and be honest and get a peice of provision and daily bread out of it and then the light at the end of the tunnel is a better job and better contract and freedom is real it comes through perseverance not complaining, this world is doomed but it is good without sin, and God is still good and re making things in ways we cannot see and God our Lord His promises are real and He will make good on His promises. Earth life is not going to be easy in this flesh but the Holy Spirit will re build greatness and Gods plan is perfect in the ultimate outcome beyond the grave.
Why is this even a story? My building is bigger than your building. Sounds like some kindergarten debate. How about worrying about something that's important, like revitilizing the economy!
The business world got no respect to deads and no humanity.... They built a building on a mass murder graveyard. This is not going to be good.
To them, it's just another HUGE real estate space that is unoccupied.
who out there is there to rent space in this piece of goverment waste? maybe will could move the welfare people and the illegals into it and the taxpayers could pay their rent half of the NY area is free housing already so move them in we can also move the people who destroyed the old buildings because they are being mistreated in the prison in cuba. We could call it the liberals tower that was union made and took three times to long to build. Should of gave the work to some state that has right to work statius and we all could of saved about seventy precent of the costs.
I find this story very typical of America and Americans in general. We have to make ourselves feel better so we build it bigger and stronger. We spend 10 times what we need to on extra security and design it to withstand almost anything. If I am a terrorist I am sitting in my cave somewhere laughing my ass off at the people of New York city and Americans as a whole nation. With a hand full of men and a few box cutters we as terrorists have brought the mightiest nation to its knees. We have made you go trillions of dollars in dept to retaliate and spend billions of dollars on a new building that we could give a s*#t less about. The next plane or bomb will be just down the street at a building that has none of the protections the new building has. Maybe a grade school next time to really make Americans suffer. What? You don't think they are capable of such a whorable act? If we wanted to honor the Americans that died on 911 we should have dumped all that money into our failing education system and named a new school after every one of them. I know for myself I would be much more honored if a brighter future for my children and future generations of children was at the end of such a heinous act. Instead we saddle our children and those that follow with unfathomable dept. To make ourselves feel better about what happened we waist even more on this building under the guise we are somehow honoring the dead. I would have rebuilt both buildings exactly as they were and added one floor. Do we really think terrorists can't find another building to fly into? Really??? Very hilarious that they are claiming to surpass the height of the empire state building but not counting it's antenna when they will be counting their own antenna when their building is finished. Can't have it both ways guys.
HOW much was paid to the Indians for Manhattan Island? no peeking !!!
$27? I think that was the value of what was given? OK...I looked, it was $24 so I edited this :)
hahaha JB.. I thought it was $17 but looked it up also..
give God the glory either way, the tallest is the lowest, that no one should boast.....shed His grace on thee..
a petty concern, great job to all the servants who designed and built it and thank the Lord for providing for them despite hard times...
I admire the spirit of NYC. God bless all working on this structure. May it stand for generations to come as a symbol of freedom. Please re route air traffic away from airspace.
it looks tall
To not have this debate I wonder why they didn't just make it taller...period.
This to me represents the lose of such great life over 10 years ago, and it's a beautiful reminder of all the hero's that soared much higher to the hands of God. Simply Awesome!
$24
Glad the "Freedom Tower" is nearing completion and it's a tall and quite striking building. However, compared to Dubai's Burj Khalifa's 2700' + true building height, it's just a small fry.
It's a giant middle finger to Al Qaeda I say count it.
I like that analogy.
It is REEEAALLLLYYYY amusing to see the comments pointed in a direction from the article so as not to open any debate as to the events surrounding 9/11. No one is supposed to ask questions about 9/11 or doubt the official story in any way, because it would be disrespectful to the families of the victims, you know, those same family members who demanded the original 9/11 investigation and set in the audience at a press conference holding up cards stating "LIARS" and "MURDERERS" to the 9/11 Commission members who manufactured and omitted evidence and manipulated timelines to make the official story fit. Yeah, those victims families would certainly be disrespected by the truth.
agreed, people will bash seekers of truth no matter what the situation. people will bash without any due dilligence on their own for whatever reasons (excuses) they come up with. it doesn't fit into their neat tidy little world and you might ruin it for them by speaking the truth. open your eyes people and stop believing everything they (govt/MSM) tell you on the news and on their websites and in the papers. they have their agendas and you can find them out if you open your eyes (and it doesnt matter Democrat or Republican btw) and do some good intelligent research. dont be one of the sheep. think for yourself!!! the answers are clear if you open your eyes and ask some intelligent questions!!
Buracratts sure know how to waste money
Buracratts sure know how to waste money
Who has the biggest one? Who has the tallest one? Who has the widest one? What are we talking about here people?
Al Qaida is working and they do have money and are still after America. I think they will still try and see if they can lay down an attack of the WTC towers or other buildings for emotional and financial reasons.
Damn New Yorkers, boo hoo, because of the attacks, it deserves the title. If it is not the tallest, it is not the tallest. What if it was only 3 stories? oh, it deserves the title. Just like when the Diamond Backs kicked your butt in November 2001, they said "New York needed that win, and all they did was cry about losing the game.
Roger, do you remember 9-11? if so, then you need to apologize.