World Trade Center (1973–2001)

• 1. Introduction

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  The original World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan had its own zip code, 10048. The number hints at the scale of the place. On a typical weekday, an estimated 50,000 people worked there, and another 140,000 passed through as visitors. More than 430 companies did business inside its buildings.

  Yet the ground under all that glass and steel had a stranger past than most visitors ever guessed. Part of the site had once been underwater. Parts of it had belonged to a neighborhood that looked nothing like a financial center.

  How did a project this large win approval from two states and a city? How did its designers make towers that tall comfortable to work in? What was it like to spend a day inside? And how did the story of the complex end?

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• 2. Radio Row and the Deal

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  In November 1613, the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block lost his ship, the Tyger, to a fire on the Hudson shoreline, near the corner of Greenwich Street and the former Dey Street. The vessel burned to the waterline. Block and his crew were stranded and forced to overwinter on the island, and they built the first European settlement in Manhattan. When landfill began extending the shore in 1797, the wreck was buried. Workers found it during excavation in 1916. In 2010, diggers found a second ship from the eighteenth century, believed to be a Hudson River sloop, about 20 ft below the surface and just south of where the Twin Towers later stood.

  Harry Schneck opened a shop called City Radio on Cortlandt Street in 1921, and the blocks around it grew into Radio Row. The district lasted until 1966. Electronics stores filled several blocks, with Cortlandt Street as the central axis. Used radios, war surplus gear such as AN/ARC-5 radios, junk, and spare parts were piled so high that they spilled into the street, drawing collectors and scroungers. According to one business writer, the district was where the electronic component distribution business began.

  The idea of a World Trade Center for New York was first proposed in 1943. The state legislature passed a bill authorizing Governor Thomas E. Dewey to begin planning, but the effort was put on hold in 1949. Through the late 1940s and 1950s, the city's economic growth gathered in Midtown. To spark urban renewal downtown, David Rockefeller suggested that the Port Authority build a World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

  In 1961, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey faced a choice between two sites. One was the east side of Lower Manhattan, near the South Street Seaport. The other was the west side, near the Hudson Terminal station of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad. The first public plans pointed to the East River. As a bi-state agency, the Port Authority needed both governors to approve. New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner objected to New York receiving a $335 million project, and by the end of 1961 talks with him had stalled.

  Ridership on the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad had fallen from a high of 113 million riders in 1927 to 26 million in 1958, after new automobile tunnels and bridges opened across the Hudson. In December 1961, Port Authority director Austin J. Tobin met the newly elected New Jersey Governor, Richard J. Hughes, and offered to take over the railroad. The two sides also agreed to move the trade center to the Hudson Terminal site, which suited New Jersey commuters arriving by train. New Jersey agreed to support the plan. The railroad was renamed Port Authority Trans-Hudson, or PATH for short.

  Each Radio Row business received $3,000 from the Port Authority, no matter how long it had operated or how well it had done. The agency was buying properties in the area by March 1965, and demolition began in March 1966. By the end of that year the district was gone. Not everyone left quietly. The area held hundreds of commercial and industrial tenants, property owners, small businesses, and about 100 residents, and many fiercely resisted being forced out. A group of small businesses sought an injunction against the Port Authority's use of eminent domain. The case climbed all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which refused to hear it.

  On the 3rd of August 1966, the Port Authority and New York City settled their dispute over taxes. Mayor John Lindsay and the City Council had to approve the project, and the City Planning Commission wanted larger payments in lieu of taxes. Under the agreement, the Port Authority would make annual payments for the portion of the complex leased to private tenants, rising as the real estate tax rate rose. In May 1967, the planning commission approved changes to the street grid that let the agency begin acquiring land for the complex.

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• 3. Yamasaki's Vision

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  On the 20th of September 1962, the Port Authority announced that Minoru Yamasaki would be lead architect, with Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. Yamasaki devised the plan for twin towers. His original idea called for each to rise 80 stories. The Port Authority required 10,000,000 sq ft of office space, and meeting that figure meant each tower had to reach 110 stories.

  The Port Authority showed the public a model of the complex on the 18th of January 1964. It featured two towers rising 1350 ft, surrounded by several six-story buildings around a central plaza. Those buildings would hold offices, restaurants, a hotel, exhibition space, stores, and an information center about world trade. A final model followed in March 1966. Despite public criticism of the towers' height, the architects made only minor changes. The plans released in May 1966 placed four low-rise structures around the plaza.

  Each tower measured about 208 ft on a side, and its office windows were only 18 in wide. The narrow windows reflected Yamasaki's fear of heights and his wish for occupants to feel secure. The facades were clad in aluminum-alloy. The complex ranks among the most striking American expressions of Le Corbusier's architectural ethic. It is also the clearest statement of Yamasaki's gothic modernist leanings. He drew on Islamic architecture as well, having designed Dhahran International Airport in Saudi Arabia with the Saudi Binladin Group.

  At a press conference in 1973, someone asked Yamasaki, "Why two 110-story buildings? Why not one 220-story building?" He answered with a joke: "I didn't want to lose the human scale."

  Passengers headed for the upper floors changed elevators on the 44th or 78th floor. Elevators set a limit on how tall a building can practically rise, because each added floor demands more shafts that eat into usable space. Yamasaki and the engineers borrowed an idea from the local-express service of the New York subway. At each sky lobby, riders switched from a large express elevator to a local one serving every floor in that section. Local cars could be stacked inside the same shaft. That raised the usable share of each floor from 62 to 75 percent. In all, the complex had 95 express and local elevators.

  The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson turned the design into a framed tube. Bangladeshi-American engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan had introduced the method in the 1960s. It allowed more open floor plans than the older approach of scattering columns through the interior. Each tower had 236 high-strength steel columns around its perimeter, set closely enough to form a rigid wall. That wall resisted virtually all the wind and shared the weight load with the core. Each side had 59 columns, built from prefabricated modules of three columns and three stories, welded together at a shop and bolted on site. The joints were staggered so that splices never lined up on a single floor. Below the 7th floor, fewer and wider-spaced columns made room for doorways.

  The core of each tower was a rectangle 87 by 135 ft, holding 47 steel columns that ran from bedrock to the top. It also housed elevator and utility shafts, restrooms, and three stairwells. Prefabricated floor trusses bridged the column-free space between core and perimeter. They carried 4 in thick lightweight concrete slabs laid on fluted steel decking. From the 107th floor to the top, hat trusses were designed to support a tall communication antenna. Only the North Tower ever received its spire.

  In wind tunnel experiments on how much sway occupants could tolerate, many subjects felt dizzy and unwell. A steel structure protected by sprayed-on fireproofing is light, and it moves more in the wind than a heavy masonry building such as the Empire State Building. Chief engineer Leslie Robertson worked with the Canadian engineer Alan G. Davenport to develop viscoelastic dampers. These were placed at the joints between the floor trusses and the perimeter columns. Along with some other structural changes, they brought the sway down to an acceptable level.

  The Port Authority, as an interstate agency, was not bound by New York City's building codes. The structural engineers nevertheless followed draft versions of the city's new 1968 codes. Tishman Realty & Construction Company served as general contractor, while Guy F. Tozzoli and Rino M. Monti oversaw the project for the Port Authority.

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• 4. Digging the Bathtub

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  Demolition crews started clearing thirteen square blocks of low-rise Radio Row buildings on the 21st of March 1966. Groundbreaking followed on the 5th of August 1966. The site sat on filled land, with bedrock 65 ft below. Building there meant holding back the Hudson River, so engineers set out to construct a "bathtub": a slurry wall along the West Street side.

  John M. Kyle Jr., the Port Authority's chief engineer, chose the slurry method. Crews dug a trench and, as the digging went on, filled the space with a mixture of bentonite and water that plugged holes and kept groundwater out. Once the trench reached full depth, a steel cage was lowered in and concrete was poured, forcing the slurry out. The wall took fourteen months to finish, and excavation of the interior could not begin before then.

  The 1,200,000 cubic yards of excavated material found a second use. Together with other fill and dredge material, it extended the Manhattan shoreline across West Street and formed Battery Park City.

  In January 1967, the Port Authority awarded $74 million in contracts to steel suppliers. Excavation of the bathtub began in late 1967. Work on the North Tower started in August 1968, and the South Tower was under way by January 1969. The original Hudson Tubes kept carrying PATH trains into Hudson Terminal during the construction, until a new station opened in 1971.

  The first tenants moved into the North Tower on the 15th of December 1970, while the building was still going up. The topping out ceremony for the North Tower took place on the 23rd of December 1970, and the South Tower's followed on the 19th of July 1971. Prefabricated components sped the work along. The South Tower began accepting tenants in January 1972. By late 1971, the complex had 111 tenants with a combined 1,800 employees.

  By the time the Twin Towers were finished, the total cost to the Port Authority had reached $900 million. The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place on the 4th of April 1973. Four low-rise buildings had been completed in the early 1970s. Together the main buildings occupied a 16 acre superblock.

  At 1368 ft, the North Tower became the tallest building in the world once it was completed in 1972, ending the Empire State Building's 40-year reign. The title lasted two years. Chicago's Sears Tower, now called Willis Tower, was finished in May 1973 and reached 1450 ft at its rooftop. The South Tower, completed in 1973, stood at 1362 ft. A 362 foot mast, added to the North Tower's roof in 1979 and upgraded in 1999 for digital television, raised its highest point to 1730 ft.

  The Twin Towers' 110 floors topped every other building until the Sears Tower was completed in 1973, and no building passed that count until the Burj Khalifa opened in 2010. Each tower had a mass of around 500,000 tons. The pair remained the tallest twin buildings in the world until 1996, when the Petronas Towers opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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• 5. A City Within a City

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  The plaza at the center of the complex covered 5 acres, and World Trade Center officials wanted it to be a "contemplative space" or a Zen garden. In 1982 it was renamed Austin J. Tobin Plaza, honoring the late Port Authority chairman who had authorized the construction. Each summer the Port Authority set up a portable stage against the North Tower for a series of concerts called "OnStage at the Twin Towers". At the center stood The Sphere, a monumental bronze sculpture by the German artist Fritz Koenig. It sat in a fountain and completed one full rotation every 24 hours. Other works included Ideogram, Cloud Fortress, and the fountain memorial to the 1993 bombing. Muzak played through installed loudspeakers.

  Pedestrians crossing the plaza sometimes needed help from ropes. For many years the Venturi effect between the two towers produced brisk winds at ground level, and some gusts were that strong. In 1997, Tony May opened an Italian restaurant called Gemelli in the plaza, next to 4 World Trade Center. The following year he opened another nearby, called Pasta Break. On the 9th of June 1999, the outdoor plaza reopened after $12 million in renovations. Over 40,000 gray and pink granite stones replaced the marble pavers, and the work added benches, planters, food kiosks, and outdoor dining areas.

  Most of the complex was off-limits to the public, but the South Tower had a glass-enclosed observation deck on the 107th floor, called Top of the World. It opened in December 1975. Visitors paid an entrance fee on the second floor and passed security checks that were added after the 1993 bombing. A dedicated express elevator, reached only through the core, took them to the indoor observatory at 1310 ft. The exterior columns were narrowed there to leave 28 inches of window width between them.

  In 1995, the Port Authority leased operation of the observatory to Ogden Entertainment, which renovated it. The Top of the World tour reopened on the 30th of April 1997. New attractions included 24 video monitors describing 44 points of interest in six languages. There was a theater showing a simulated helicopter tour around the city, called "Manhattan Magic", and a model of Manhattan with 750 buildings. A Kodak photo booth and two gift shops were added too. The 107th floor also had a subway-themed food court, with Sbarro Street Station, Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs, and a dining area made to look like Central Park. In 1995, the floor also hosted the PCA world chess championship.

  Weather permitting, visitors could ride two short escalators up to an outdoor platform at 1377 ft. On a clear day they could see up to 50 mi. An anti-suicide fence stood on the roof itself, with the platform set back and elevated above it, so only an ordinary railing was needed. That kept the view unobstructed, unlike the deck of the Empire State Building.

  Joe Baum spent more than $17 million developing Windows on the World, the restaurant on the North Tower's 106th and 107th floors. It opened in April 1976. Two offshoots sat at the top of the tower. Hors d'Oeuvrerie offered a Danish smorgasbord by day and sushi in the evening, while Cellar in the Sky was a small wine bar. The restaurant complex also ran a wine school led by Kevin Zraly, who published a book on the course. Windows on the World also operated the Skydive Restaurant, a 180-seat cafeteria on the 44th floor of the North Tower, conceived for office workers.

  The 1993 bombing damaged the receiving areas, storage, and parking used by the restaurant complex, and Windows on the World had to close. On the 12th of May 1994, the Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Company won the contract to run the restaurants, after the former operator, Inhilco, gave up its lease. The restaurant reopened on the 26th of June 1996, with the Greatest Bar on Earth and a returning Cellar in the Sky. In 1999, Cellar in the Sky became an American steakhouse called Wild Blue. In 2000, its last full year, Windows on the World reported revenues of $37 million, making it the highest-grossing restaurant in the United States.

  Critics were mixed. In December 1996, Ruth Reichl of The New York Times wrote that "nobody will ever go to Windows on the World just to eat, but even the fussiest food person can now be content dining at one of New York's favorite tourist destinations". She gave it two out of four stars. In his 2009 book Appetite, William Grimes wrote, "At Windows, New York was the main course". In 2014, Ryan Sutton of Eater.com compared the lost restaurant with its replacement, One World Observatory. He said Windows had helped usher in an era of captive audience dining, where the restaurant was a destination in itself.

  A 22-floor hotel opened at the southwest corner of the site in 1981 as the Vista Hotel. In 1995 it became the Marriott World Trade Center, known as 3 WTC. Three steel-framed low-rise office buildings stood around the plaza. 6 World Trade Center, at the northwest corner, housed the United States Customs Service. 5 World Trade Center sat at the northeast corner above the PATH station. 4 World Trade Center, at the southeast corner, housed the U.S. Commodities Exchange. In 1987, a 47-floor office building, 7 World Trade Center, was completed to the north of the superblock. An underground shopping mall below connected to the subway and PATH.

  Beneath all of it lay one of the world's largest gold depositories, owned by a group of commercial banks. The 1993 bombing went off close to the vault. Seven weeks after the September 11 attacks, $230 million in precious metals was removed from the basement vaults of 4 WTC. The haul included 3,800 gold bars of 100 Troy ounces each, in 24 carat gold, and 30,000 silver bars of 1,000 ounces each.

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• 6. Fire, Bombs, and Tightropes

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  On the 12th of February 1975, a three-alarm fire broke out on the 11th floor of the North Tower. It started when telephone cable insulation ignited in a utility shaft that ran between floors, and it spread to the 9th and 14th floors. The farthest reaches were put out almost immediately, and the original fire was out within a few hours. Most of the damage stayed on the 11th floor, fed by cabinets of paper, alcohol-based fluid for office machines, and other equipment. Fireproofing protected the steel, so the tower suffered no structural damage. Water used to fight the fire damaged a few floors below.

  At the time, the complex had no fire sprinkler systems. On the 12th of March 1981, the Port Authority announced a $45 million plan to install sprinklers throughout. The fire turned out to be deliberate. A disgruntled custodian, 19-year-old Oswald Adorno, was found to have started it and was criminally charged.

  On the 20th of February 1981, Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 342, a Boeing 707-387B, nearly struck the North Tower's transmitting antenna while approaching John F. Kennedy International Airport. The air traffic controller's intervention averted the collision. By one account, less than 90 seconds separated the aircraft from the tower.

  At 12:17 p.m. on the 26th of February 1993, a Ryder truck packed with 1500 lb of explosives detonated in the North Tower's underground garage. Ramzi Yousef had planted it. The blast tore a hole 100 ft across through five sublevels. The worst damage fell on levels B1 and B2, with significant structural damage on B3. Six people were killed and 1,042 others were injured, some by smoke inhalation. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and four other individuals were later convicted for their involvement. Yousef and Eyad Ismoil were convicted of carrying out the bombing. A presiding judge said the conspirators' chief aim was to destabilize the North Tower. They hoped it would crash into the South Tower and topple both.

  Repairs began with the floors that had been blown out, since those slabs had braced the columns. The slurry wall was in peril as well, having lost the slabs that supported it against the pressure of Hudson River water. The refrigeration plant on sublevel B5, which cooled the entire complex, was heavily damaged, and the fire alarm system had to be replaced because critical wiring was destroyed. The Port Authority added photoluminescent markings along the stairwell paths. The South Tower reopened to tenants on the 18th of March 1993, and the North Tower on the 1st of April. Repairs to both towers were estimated at $250 million. The hotel at 3 World Trade Center stayed closed until the 1st of November 1994, after $65 million in renovations.

  A reflecting pool memorial to the victims of the bombing was installed, with the names of those killed. It was later destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Those names appear in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

  In January 1998, a member of the DeCavalcante crime family named Ralph Guarino gained maintenance access to the complex. On the 14th of January he arranged a three-man crew for a heist. The crew took more than $2 million from a Brinks delivery to the North Tower's 11th floor.

  On the 8th of February 2000, a worker was crushed to death and another injured by an industrial cooling unit. On the 11th of August 2000, an elevator went past its stop at the 78th floor and slammed into the top of its shaft. Eight people were taken to hospitals, and four more were treated at the scene.

  The complex drew daredevils too. On the morning of the 7th of August 1974, Philippe Petit walked a wire between the two towers, 1,312 ft above the ground. His rig used a 440 lb cable, and he carried a custom-made balancing pole 30 ft long and weighing 55 lb. He performed for 45 minutes and made eight passes along the wire. Petit was charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct, but he was freed in exchange for performing for children in Central Park. The walk inspired books, the documentary Man on Wire in 2008, and the feature film The Walk in 2015.

  In 1975, Owen J. Quinn base-jumped from the North Tower's roof and landed safely on the plaza. He claimed he wanted to publicize the plight of the poor. On the 26th of May 1977, Brooklyn toymaker George Willig scaled the exterior of the South Tower. He later said, "It looked unscalable; I thought I'd like to try it." Six years later, Dan Goodwin, an advocate for high-rise firefighting and rescue, climbed the outside of the North Tower. He wanted to call attention to the inability to rescue people who might be trapped on the upper floors of skyscrapers.

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• 7. Destruction and Rebuilding

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  Slow leasing had been a hallmark of the complex for decades, and the Twin Towers suffered high vacancy rates throughout. The complex reached 95% occupancy only in mid-2001. In the late 1990s the Port Authority decided to privatize the complex, which would add it to the city's tax rolls and fund other projects. Bids for the lease came from Vornado Realty Trust, from Brookfield Properties and Boston Properties together, and from Silverstein Properties and the Westfield Group together.

  On the 15th of February 2001, the Port Authority announced that Vornado had won, offering $3.25 billion for a 99-year lease. Vornado outbid Silverstein by $600 million, although Silverstein then raised his offer to $3.22 billion. Vornado then pressed for last-minute changes, including a shorter 39-year lease, which the Port Authority considered nonnegotiable. Vornado withdrew. Silverstein's bid was accepted on the 26th of April 2001, and the lease closed on the 24th of July 2001.

  At 8:46:40 a.m. on the 11th of September 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the northern facade of the North Tower, between the 93rd and 99th floors. A group of Islamist hijackers led by Mohamed Atta had taken control of the aircraft. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03:11 a.m., a second group led by Marwan al-Shehhi crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the southern facade of the South Tower, between the 77th and 85th floors. The terrorist organization al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, carried out the attacks. It said they were retaliation for aspects of American foreign policy, particularly U.S. support of Israel and the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

  In the North Tower, the damage destroyed any means of escape from above the impact zone, trapping 1,344 people. Flight 175 hit with a much more off-center impact, and a single stairwell was left intact. Only a few people managed to descend before the tower collapsed. The South Tower was struck lower, which affected more floors. Even so, fewer than 700 people there were killed instantly or trapped. The National Institute of Standards and Technology estimated that approximately 17,400 people were in the towers. In the first hours, media reports suggested that tens of thousands might have died, because over 50,000 could have been inside.

  The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., after burning for approximately 56 minutes. The fire made steel elements, already weakened by the impact, fail. The North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m., after burning for approximately 102 minutes. At 5:20 p.m., 7 World Trade Center began to collapse with its east penthouse, and it fell completely at 5:21 p.m. because of uncontrolled fires. The Marriott hotel was destroyed in the towers' collapse. The three remaining plaza buildings were extensively damaged by debris and later demolished.

  St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, a small church directly south of the towers, was destroyed when the South Tower fell. It was rebuilt and opened in December 2022. The Deutsche Bank Building across Liberty Street was condemned because of toxic conditions inside, and its deconstruction was completed in early 2011. Fiterman Hall, part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College at 30 West Broadway, was also condemned, then demolished and completely rebuilt.

  Officials eventually filed 2,753 death certificates connected to the attacks, not counting the hijackers. Everyone aboard both aircraft died as well. Of those who died in and around the complex, 2,192 were civilians. They included 658 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank on the 101st to 105th floors of One World Trade Center. Another 295 worked for Marsh & McLennan Companies, on floors 93 to 101, where Flight 11 struck. Another 175 worked for Aon Corporation.

  Among the dead were 414 sworn personnel. They included 343 New York City Fire Department members, among them 2 paramedics and 1 chaplain. They also included 71 law enforcement officers, among them 37 from the Port Authority Police Department and 23 from the New York City Police Department. Eight EMS personnel from private agencies died too. Of everyone still inside the towers when they fell, only 20 were pulled out alive. Ten years after the attacks, the remains of only 1,629 victims had been identified. The site became known as "Ground Zero".

  The cleanup and recovery took eight months, during which the remains of the other buildings were demolished. On the 30th of May 2002, the last piece of World Trade Center steel was ceremonially removed. In November 2001, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was established to oversee rebuilding, and it ran competitions to select a site plan and a memorial design. Daniel Libeskind's Memory Foundations was chosen as the master plan, though substantial changes were made. Unlike the original project, the rebuilding drew significant public input. The public supported restoring a street grid through the site, and the Port Authority ultimately decided to rebuild Cortlandt, Fulton, and Greenwich Streets.

  The first new building, 7 WTC, opened on the 23rd of May 2006. The memorial section of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum opened on the 11th of September 2011, with two square reflecting pools marking where the Twin Towers stood. 4 WTC opened on the 13th of November 2013, and the museum on the 21st of May 2014. One World Trade Center, which reached 1776 ft and is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, completed construction in May 2013 and opened on the 3rd of November 2014. 3 WTC opened on the 11th of June 2018.

  Two sites stayed unfinished. Under a November 2013 agreement with Silverstein Properties, the new 2 WTC would not rise to full height until enough space was leased to make it financially viable. Above-ground work on 5 WTC was also suspended, because of a lack of tenants and disputes between the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. In mid-2015, Silverstein revealed a redesigned 2 WTC by Bjarke Ingels, to be completed by 2020 with News Corp as anchor tenant. Four years later, with no anchor tenant signed, Silverstein said he intended to resume work regardless.

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• 8. Critics and Icon

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  Lewis Mumford, author of The City in History, dismissed the new skyscrapers, including these, as "just glass-and-metal filing cabinets". The American Institute of Architects and other groups also criticized the design. When the Twin Towers were first announced, the architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: "Here we have the world's daintiest architecture for the world's biggest buildings." Some said the towers looked like "the boxes that the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building came in". In his book The Pentagon of Power, Mumford called the complex an "example of the purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism that are now eviscerating the living tissue of every great city".

  Cultural critic Paul Fussell, in his 1991 book BAD Or, The Dumbing of America, called the towers "charmless, merely tall, and huge blunt buildings". He added that they were "brutal and despotic. Dull and witless, expressive only of dumb, raw power, they are widely touted as among the major achievements of the late twentieth century." In 1996, James Howard Kunstler wrote in Home from Nowhere that proving such buildings could be built was probably necessary for mankind's collective ego. But he said they were not worth the "distortions of population density" they created. Jane Jacobs argued that the waterfront should be left open for New Yorkers to enjoy.

  Lawrence A. Wien, owner of the Empire State Building, led private developers and members of the Real Estate Board of New York in objecting to so much "subsidized" office space entering a market with a glut of vacancies. The complex was not fully rented until after 1979, and only because of subsidies. Another critic wondered whether the Port Authority should have taken on a project that some called a "mistaken social priority". Still, in 2007 the American Institute of Architects ranked the complex 19th among 150 buildings in its List of America's Favorite Architecture.

  The neighborhood around the site paid a price too. The superblock cut through the area's street grid and isolated the complex from the community, after the Port Authority demolished several streets to make way for it. In the late 1980s, 7 World Trade Center was built over another block of Greenwich Street. It acted as a physical barrier between Tribeca to the north and the Financial District to the south. The underground mall drew shoppers away from surrounding streets. Many saw the project as monolithic and overambitious, and the design had no public input.

  A 1999 writer noted that nearly every guidebook in New York City listed the Twin Towers among the city's top ten attractions. Film and television crews used them as establishing shots that stood for the whole city. The towers took a place beside the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Statue of Liberty as a New York icon. In Sidney Lumet's The Wiz in 1978, the complex stood in for the Emerald City. King Kong in 1976 set lengthy scenes there, while Independence Day in 1996 and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992 showed the towers only briefly. In 2006, one estimate put the World Trade Center in 472 films.

  Film critic David Sterritt, who lived near the complex, said its appearance in the 1978 film Superman "summarized a certain kind of American grandeur … the grandeur, I would say, of sheer American powerfulness". Other films used the towers for other meanings. Working Girl in 1988 used them for romance, while Wall Street in 1987 and The Bonfire of the Vanities in 1990 used them for corporate avarice. Comic books, animated cartoons, television shows, video games, and music videos also placed stories there.

  After the attacks, the Simpsons episode "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", which first aired in 1997, was removed from syndication because a scene showed the complex. Songs that mentioned the World Trade Center were no longer aired on radio. Producers delayed the 2001-2002 films Sidewalks of New York, People I Know, and Spider-Man to remove scenes and poster images showing the towers. Kissing Jessica Stein had screened at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival the day before the attacks and was modified before general release. By the first anniversary, over sixty "memorial films" had been made.

  Filmmakers who cut the towers drew criticism. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post said, "if we erase the towers from our art, we erase from our memories". Author Donald Langmead compared the trend to the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where records of past events are retroactively "rectified". Michael Bay, who directed Armageddon in 1998, opposed removing references to the complex based on post-9/11 attitudes. Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, released in 2006, was the first movie to examine the attacks' effects on the complex itself. In time, works such as the Simpsons episode returned to syndication, and the National September 11 Museum preserves many that show the original towers.

  The complex used two logos over its lifetime. The first, used from 1973 to 1993, showed two open rectangles, one of them upside down. After the 1993 bombing, a new logo was unveiled, with the towers encircled by a globe. It appeared throughout the complex and on commemorative mugs given to tenants, with the caption "Welcome back to the World Trade Center".

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