Almost twelve years after the devastating events on 9/11/01, the final two sections of the spire were placed atop the gleaming skyscraper at Ground Zero this morning. The official height is now a symbolic 1,776 feet.
With the cladding on the building nearing completion, it is easy to imagine what it will look like when finished. I personally believe NYC blew their opportunity to reclaim the skyline in an awesome way. This is too short, it took far too long to construct, and they allowed fear, politics, and greed to turn what could have been an amazing piece of architecture into a mediocre skyscraper.
When renders were released last year showing some significant design changes to One World Trade Center, many followers of the project were greatly disappointed. An ugly antenna replaced the modern spire, and the tapered edges of the base which reflected the isosceles triangles in the upper body of the building had been removed in favor of a boring and basic cube.
Although the official word was that both changes were related to either safety or maintenance, the truth seems to be neither. Esquire’s recent in-depth article might reveal the true reason for the changes.
As the estimate for completing the tower rose past $3 billion, the PA struck a deal in 2010 with a city real estate developer, the Durst Organization, to help finish, manage, and lease the tower: For $100 million, Durst received a 10 percent equity interest in the building, plus a $15 million management contract that gave Durst 75 percent of any monies saved by cutting construction costs up to $12 million, and a mere 50 percent of every penny cut thereafter.
To nobody’s surprise and David Childs’s despair, Durst found costs to cut, particularly at the top and bottom of the tower. The prismatic glass chosen to wrap the base of the building was replaced with a cheaper version, requiring that the corners of the tower’s first two hundred feet be squared off after those corners had already been tapered to meet the thousand-foot isosceles triangles of the curtain wall. Then Durst took its meat-ax to the tower’s 408-foot spire: By simply scrapping the radome — a sculpted shell of fiberglass and steel designed to sheathe the antennae and maintenance platforms atop the building — shazam! $20 million saved.
It is a shame that the centerpiece of rebuilding at Ground Zero has lost so much of its appeal because of greed, but perhaps good old greed makes this tower even more of an American symbol.
Eight years ago today, I met Honey for the first time. We had connected through an online dating service, chatted for several nights, and finally agreed to meet in person. After spending the evening eating dinner and watching a movie with a very polite and quiet young man, I assumed he didn’t like me. You know what they say about assumptions…
This is now the longest relationship I have ever been in. I don’t want to jinx things, but I am happy, contented, and fulfilled. I consider him to be my greatest friend, and there can’t be anything much better than getting to spend your life with your best friend.
In my opinion, no matter what the final cause of Michael’s death, there can be no doubt that Michael Jackson died of a broken heart, of deep and lasting pain, and that the principal twin causes of that pain were a broken relationship with his own father and the fact that innumerable people believed he was a predator who preyed on unsuspecting children.
The iconic tower in lower Manhattan is expected to reach its final height of 1,776 ft sometime tomorrow when the final section of the mast is installed. Here is a recent photo of the skyscraper and a shot looking down from the antenna.
UPDATE: It should surprise no one that the topping out has been delayed. This building has been in an almost permanent state of delay since it began construction.
