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1. The WTC opened in 1970 after 8 years of
construction.
2. The WTC was the dream of David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan
Bank, and Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York.
3. The Rockefellers wanted to name the towers after themselves, but the mayor of
NY, John Lindsay, insisted on the World Trade Center.
4. The City chose to build the WTC instead of building a new tunnel and large
bridge over the Hudson River.
5. The World Trade Center was designed by architect Minoura Yamasaki.
6. According to Yamasaki, downtown Manhattan was the perfect place to erect the
towers because there wasn't "a single building worth saving in the
neighborhood."
7. Owners of nearby buildings disagreed, and delayed demolition by three weeks
with their protests.
8. Sixteen blocks were cleared to house the completed WTC.
9. More than 10,000 workers involved in building the complex.
10. More than 60 of them died during construction.
11. The excavation work displaced enough soil to create Liberty Park, were four
60-floor towers and four apartment buildings were constructed.
12. The WTC's foundations were laid at 60 feet below ground level.
13. The complex covered 16 acres when finished.
14. In addition to the towers, five other office buildings made up the WTC
complex.
15. The WTC had 12 million square feet of space.
16. Each floor was 50,000 square feet.
17. The buildings had their own ZIP codes - 10047 and 10048.
18. The towers were designed to look like a futuristic sculpture.
19. The structure was revolutionary. Its main supports were external, lining the
four corners of each tower.
20. Critics condemned the completed buildings as "boring."
21 Completed, the buildings were 100 feet taller then the Empire State building.
22. Until the construction of Chicago's Sears Tower and the Petronas Towers in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the twin towers were the world's tallest buildings.
23. The North Tower's 347 foot radio tower technically allowed the WTC to still
call itself the world's tallest building.
24. The towers were different heights. The South tower was 1,362 feet tall, and
big brother North tower was 1,368.
25. Sixty-eight miles of steel were used in the construction of the
buildings.
26 . The concrete poured was enough to build a road from New York to Washington,
D .C.
27. The steel inside the WTC could have made three more Brooklyn Bridges.
28. The Twin Towers had more than 16 miles of staircases.
29. There were 43,600 windows.
30. The windows were small to reduce the of heat or cold entering the building.
Regular size windows would have made the heat unbearable in the summertime.
31. The WTC's 600,000 square feet of glass was cleaned by an automatic machine.
32. The building had 20,000 elevator doors.
33. Of the WTC's 239 banks of elevators, one was known as the fastest in the
U.S.
34. The main elevators at 27 feet a second reached the top in less than a
minute.
35. There were 828 emergency exit doors.
36. 23,000 fluorescent light bulbs lit the interior.
37. Originally, there were no light switches in the towers, because energy
prices were one-third less than they are today. In 1982, switches were
installed.
38. 12,000 miles of electrical cable snaked through the building,
supplying power to 15 trading floors for stockbrokers.
39. The 75,000 telephones were maintained by 19,600 miles of cable.
40. There were more than 300 computer mainframes on site.
41. The WTC used more power in one day than most small American cities.
42. Steam supplied by a plant on New York's East River was used to heat the
buildings.
43. The buildings housed 49,000 tons of air-conditioning equipment.
44. More than 250,000 cans of paint were needed every year for upkeep of the
Towers.
45. The surrounding shopping center complex included 3250,000 square feet of
restaurants and stores.
46. Six banks, five investment firms and three insurance companies called their
headquarters there, in the building.
47. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersy had its headquarters in the
building.
48. American Express had three floors in the WTC.
49. The WTC was home base for Bank of America.
50. The trade center housed two top restaurants - the Windows on the World and
Wild Blue.
51. Windows on the World had one of the best vintage wine collections in the
United States.
52. More than 50,000 people worked in the twin towers.
53. By 9 a.m. each weekday morning, the buildings had an average of 35,000
employees at their desks.
54. More than 200,000 people - half of them tourists - moved through the
buildings each day.
55. The South Tower had an observation deck that was visited by more than 26,000
people a day.
56. An information sign at the top assured visitors that the buildings had been
designed to withstand airplane crashes.
57. The towers could be seen from at least 20 miles away.
58. On a clear day, it was possible to see for 45 miles in every direction from
the observation deck.
59. The express elevator to the observation deck was the largest in the U.S.
with a 55-person capacity.
60. Every president since 1973 paid a visit to the landmark.
61. President Ronald Reagan watched July 4th fireworks celebrations from the WTC
on two occasions.
62. Superstars Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Liza Minelli all sang
in WTC restaurants.
63. Two New York TV stations incorporated the twin tower image into their logos.
64. The towers served 10 New York TV stations with 10 antennas on the top.
65. More postcards of the WTC were sent each year than any other building in the
world.
66. In 1974, a Frenchman, Phillipe Petit, strung a tightrope between the two
towers and walked across.
67. Three men successfully parachuted from the top of the towers.
68. More than a dozen mountain climbers have scaled the building.
69. In 1975 a jobless construction worker parachuted from the South Tower to
publicize the plight of the unemployed.
70. The most famous man to climb the building was George Willig - who was
arrested at the top.
71. Willig was fined one penny for each of the 110 floors he scaled.
72. Last year, a man in a micro-light aircraft crashed into the North Tower.
73. In the concourse beneath the towers, there were more than 75 stores.
74. Each day, over 150,000 commuters passed through the three subway stations
there.
75. Eighty seven tons of food was delivered to the building each day.
76. Over 30,000 cups of coffee were poured daily in the basement cafes.
77. Twenty-two doctors had practices there.
78. Seventeen babies were born on the site.
79. Irv Silverstein recently bought the WTC for almost $3.2 billion.
80. The WTC generated $110 million a year in profit.
81. More than three dozen movies have been filmed there.
82. The best known film to use the WTC as a location was the 1976 remake of King
Kong.
83. The 1993 bombing of the WTC killed six people and injured 1,000 more. 84.
1,300 pounds of explosives ripped through the garage in the 1993 attack.
85. That bomb created a crater 16 feet deep and badly damaged inner support
beams.
86. Before the 1993 attack, there were three closed circuit television networks
for security.
87. After the bombing, the cameras were increased to 300 monitored by computers.
88. More than 300 security guards worked there.
89. The WTC featured security centers on 14 different floors and its own police
station.
90. The entrance lobbies had 16 concierge desks and 12 X-ray machines.
91. After the first bombing, no one could get inside the buildings without an ID
check.
92. It took an average of five minutes for a visitor to pass through
security checks.
93. Before the 1993 bombing, there were more than 1,000 parking spaces beneath
the buildings; 600 remained afterward.
94. All vehicles using the parking lot had to show FBI security passes.
95. On Sept. 11, the building was 95 percent full, with over 400 tenants.
96. New York Gov. George Pataki had an office in the WTC, but wasn't there when
the disaster struck.
97. Both the Secret Service and the FBI rented office space there.
98. $110.3 million in gold and 120.7 million in silver is buried in the rubble.
99. The combined weight of the towers was more than 1.5 million tons.
100. Each tower was built to safely sway
about three feet during strong wind storms.
101. Blue Cross-Blue Shield, New York's largest health insurance company, moved
into the building 3 years ago.
102. Nine chapels serving six different faiths called the WTC home.
103. Twenty-nine countries had trade mission offices in the buildings.
104. Every major U.S. airline had ticket offices inside the WTC.
105. It is the first skyscraper in the world destroyed by terrorists.
The World Trade Center had two 110-story buildings,
known as the "Twin Towers" and five smaller buildings.
• Tower One was 1,368 feet (414 meters) tall
• Tower Two was 1,362 feet (412 meters) tall
• The Twin Towers were the tallest until the Sears Tower surpassed them.
• Architects: Minoru Yamaski & Associates and Emery, Roth & Sons.
• Built of aluminum and steel.
• The foundation of each tower extended more than 70 feet below ground,
resting on solid bedrock.
• Constructed on six acres of landfill.
• The towers were the best known examples of "tube buildings," which
are strenghtened by closely spaced columns and beams in the outer walls.
• Each tower consisted of 104 passenger elevators and 21,800 windows.
• About 50,000 people worked in the complex, which housed the offices of more
than 430 businesses from 26 countries.
• Completed in 1970.
• Automatic window-washing machines cleaned 600,000 square feet of glass.
Source: World Trade Center and PBS
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This site is dedicated to the victims and heroes of this Cowardly Terrorist Act.
