C.N. “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Ploiești

2012

ATESTAT LA LIMBA ENGLEZĂ WORLD TRADE CENTER

ENE ALEXANDRA ȘTEFANIA CLS. A XII-A B

PROF. COORDONATOR: MÂNDOIANU DOINA FOREWORD

The twin towers of the World Trade Center were more than just buildings. They were proof of New York's belief in itself. Built at a time when New York's future seemed uncertain, the towers restored confidence and helped bring a halt to the decline of lower Manhattan. Brash, glitzy, and grand, they quickly became symbols of New York.

I have chosen the topic WORLD TRADE CENTER for my project in order to be able to elucidate a few things that did not remain too clear for me, for example, I did not know exactly the architectural details of the tower, neither the reasons the attacks were planned and I also did not understood the reactions that the attacks brought together.

All in all, this project truly helped me to clarify my thoughts about this subject and to understand better the american life before and after the attacks.

“The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace... a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and, through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.”

Minoru Yamasaki

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD ……………………………………………………………………………………………….pg. 2

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………………pg. 4 CHAPTER 1: PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION…………………………………………… pg. 6 1.1. ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN …………………………………………………….pg. 8 1.2. STRUCTURAL DESIGN ……………………………………………….………. pg. 10 1.3. CONSTRUCTION ………………………………………………………………….pg. 12 1.4. CRITICISM………………………………………………………………………….. pg. 14 CHAPTER 2: COMPLEX ……………………………………………………………………………… pg. 15 2.1. NORTH AND SOUTH TOWERS…………………………………………………. pg. 15 2.2. TOP OF WORLD OBSERVATION DECK …………………………………... pg. 17 2.3. WINDOWS OF THE WORLD RESTAURANTS ………………………….. pg. 18 2.4. OTHER BUILDINGS …………………………………………………….…………. pg. 19 CHAPTER 3: LIFE AND EVENTS……………………………………………………..…………… pg. 20 3.1. FEBRUARY 13, 1975 FIRE ………………………………………………………. pg. 21 3.2. FEBRUARY 26, 1993 BOMBING ..………………….………………………… pg. 21 3.3. LEASE ………………….………………….………………….…………………………. pg. 23 CHAPTER 4: DESTRUCTION – ………………….………… pg. 24 4.1. ATTACK………………….………………….………………….……………………….. pg. 25 4.2. ATTACKERS AND THEIR BACKGROUND ………………….……………… pg. 32 4.3. AFTER MATH ………………….………………….………………….…………………pg. 38 4.4. LONG-TERM EFFECTS ………………….………………….………………….…… pg. 44

CHAPTER 5: REBUILDING ………………….………………….………………….……………… pg. 48 5.1. HISTORY………………….………………….………………….………………….…. pg. 48 5.2. CONTROVERSY AND CRITICISM ………………….………………….…….. pg. 51 CHAPTER 6: WTC AMERICAN FLAGS ………………….………………….…………………. pg. 52 CONCLUSION ………………….………………….………………….………………….…………… pg. 54 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………….………………….………………….………………….………….. pg. 55

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INTRODUCTION

The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, , United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is being rebuilt with five new and a memorial to the casualties of the attacks. As of November 2011, only one has been completed, with four more expected to be completed before 2020. will be the lead building for the new complex and is expected to be finished by 2013. A sixth tower is still awaiting confirmation to be built. At the time of their completion, the original 1 and , known colloquially as the Twin Towers, were the tallest buildings in the world.

The complex was designed in the early 1960s by Minoru Yamasaki and Associates of Troy, , and and Sons of New York. The twin 110- story towers used a tube- frame structural design. To gain approval for the project, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to take over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, which became the Port Authority Trans- Hudson. Groundbreaking for the World Trade Center took place on August 5, 1966. The North Tower was completed in December 1972 and the South Tower was finished in July 1973. The construction project involved excavating a large amount of material, which was later used as landfill to build Battery Park City on the west side of Lower Manhattan. The cost for the construction was $400 million ($2,200,000,000 in 2012 dollars). The complex was located in the heart of New York City's downtown financial district and contained 13.4 million square feet of office space. The restaurant was located on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower while the Top of the World observation deck was located on the 107th floor of the South Tower. Other World Trade Center buildings were built between 1975 and 1981. The final building constructed, 7 WTC, was built in 1985. The second King Kong was filmed in 1976 with some scenes mentioning and showing the World Trade Center. The Center experienced a fire on February 13, 1975, and a bombing on February 26, 1993. In 1998, the Port Authority decided to privatize the World Trade Center, leasing the buildings to a private company to manage, and awarded the lease to in July 2001.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two 767 jets into the complex, one into each tower, in a coordinated terrorist attack. After burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower collapsed, followed a half-hour later by the North Tower, with the attacks on the World Trade Center resulting in 2,753 deaths. 7 WTC collapsed later in the day and the other buildings, although they did not collapse, had to be demolished because they were damaged beyond repair. The process of cleanup and recovery at the r site took eight months. The first new building at the site was 7 WTC, which opened in May 2006. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, established in November 2001 to oversee the rebuilding process, organized competitions to select a site plan and memorial design. , designed by , was selected as the master plan, but this went through substantial changes in design. The new World Trade Center complex will include One World Trade Center, three other high-rise office towers, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

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CHAPTER 1: PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION

The idea of establishing a World Trade Center in New York City was first proposed in 1943. The New York State Legislature passed a bill authorizing New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to begin developing plans for the project but the plans were put on hold in 1949. During the late ‘40s and ‘50s, economic growth in New York City was concentrated in Midtown Manhattan, while Lower Manhattan was left out. To help stimulate urban renewal, David Rockefeller suggested that the Port Authority build a World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

Initial plans, made public in 1961, identified a site along the East River for the World Trade Center. As a bi-state agency, the Port Authority required approval for new projects from the governors of both New York and New Jersey. New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner objected to New York getting a $335 million project. Toward the end of 1961, negotiations with outgoing New Jersey Governor Meyner reached a stalemate.

At the time, ridership on New Jersey's Hudson and Manhattan Railroad had declined substantially from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958 after new automobile tunnels and bridges had opened across the Hudson River. In a December 1961

6 | P a g e meeting between Port Authority director Austin J. Tobin and newly elected New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes, the Port Authority offered to take over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad to have it become the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH). They also decided to move the World Trade Center project to the Hudson Terminal building site on the west side of Lower Manhattan, a more convenient location for New Jersey commuters arriving via PATH. With the new location and Port Authority acquisition of the H&M Railroad, New Jersey, agreed to support the World Trade Center project.

Approval was also needed from New York City Mayor John Lindsay and the New York City Council. Disagreements with the city centered on tax issues. On August 3, 1966, an agreement was reached that the Port Authority would make annual payments to the City in lieu of taxes for the portion of the World Trade Center leased to private tenants. In subsequent years, the payments would rise as the real estate tax rate increased.

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1.1. ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN On September 20, 1962, the Port Authority announced the selection of Minoru Yamasaki as lead architect and Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. Yamasaki devised the plan to incorporate twin towers; Yamasaki's original plan called for the towers to be 80 stories tall.To meet the Port Authority's requirement for 10,000,000 square feet of office space, the buildings would each have to be 110 stories tall.

A typical floor layout and elevator arrangement of the WTC towers.

A major limiting factor in building height is the issue of elevators; the taller the building, the more elevators are needed to service the building, requiring more space- consuming elevator banks. Yamasaki and the engineers decided to use a new system with two "sky lobbies"— floors where people could switch from a large-capacity express elevator to a local elevator that goes to each floor in a section. This allowed the design to stack local elevators within the same elevator shaft. Located on the 44th and 78th floors of each tower, the sky lobbies enabled the elevators to be used efficiently, increasing the amount of usable space on each floor from 62 to 75 percent by reducing the number of elevator shafts. Altogether, the World Trade Center had 95 express and local elevators. This system was inspired by the system whose lines include express stations where both express and local trains stop and local stations where only local trains stop.

Yamasaki's design for the World Trade Center, unveiled to the public on January 18, 1964, called for a square plan approximately 208 feet in dimension on each side. The buildings

8 | P a g e were designed with narrow office windows 18 inches wide, which reflected Yamasaki's fear of heights as well as his desire to make building occupants feel secure. Yamasaki's design included building facades sheathed in aluminum-alloy. The World Trade Center was one of the most- striking American implementations of the architectural ethic of Le Corbusier, and it was the seminal expression of Yamasaki's gothic modernist tendencies.

In addition to the twin towers, the plan for the World Trade Center complex included four other low-rise buildings, which were built in the early . The 47-story building was added in the 1980s, to the north of the main complex. Altogether, the main World Trade Center complex occupied a 16-acre (65,000 m) superblock.

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1.2. STRUCTURAL DESIGN

The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson worked to implement Yamasaki's design, developing thetube-frame structural system used in the twin towers. The Port Authority's Engineering Department served as foundation engineers, Joseph R. Loring & Associates as electrical engineers, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles as mechanical engineers. Tishman Realty & Construction Company was the general contractor on the World Trade Center project. Guy F. Tozzoli, director of the World Trade Department at the Port Authority, and Rino M. Monti, the Port Authority's Chief Engineer, oversaw the project. As an interstate agency, the Port Authority was not subject to local laws and regulations of the City of New York including building codes. Nonetheless, the structural engineers of the World Trade Center ended up following draft versions of the new 1968 building codes. The tube-frame design, earlier introduced by Fazlur Khan, was a new approach that allowed more open floor plans than the traditional design that distributed columns throughout the interior to support building loads. The World Trade Center towers used high-strength, load-bearing perimeter steel columns called Vierendeel trusses that were spaced closely together to form a strong, rigid wall structure, supporting virtually all lateral loads such as wind loads, and sharing the gravity load with the core columns. The perimeter structure containing 59 columns per side was constructed with extensive use of prefabricated modular pieces each consisting of three columns, three stories tall, connected by spandrel plates. The spandrel plates were welded to the columns to create the modular pieces off-site at the fabrication shop. Adjacent modules were bolted together with the splices

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