History of the World Trade Center

In 1962 Minoru Yamasaki got the permission to plan the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He was the head of the planing-team. He ordered Emery Roth and Sons consulting for the technical construction and the statics. It took four years to plan the buildings an the ground breaking [1] was on August 5, 1966. The whole complex is made of glass and 200.000 pieces of stainless [2] steel. The northern tower, WTC one was 1,368 feet (417m) high and the second was 1,362 feet (415m) high. On the ground plan [3] the two buildings are each a square with an length of 208 feet (63,4m). The towers finally opened on April 4, 1973. It took thus seven years to be built an all in all $750 million have been invested into that giant-project.

There were 110 stories used up to 70 stores an restaurants. The most famous restaurant was the “Windows on the World” at the top of WTC one.

In reality the buildings have been much taller than you could watch them because under the ground floor a six-level basement were built and in this large cellar have been an subway station for the lines N, R, A, C and E. Everyday 150.000 commuters used this station to reach their offices. In the basement was a large supermarket too.

In 1993 the World Trade Center earned an unwelcome notoriety that foreshadowed its fate today. On the morning of February 26 an explosion rocked a commuter train station under the WTC, killing six people and injuring more than 1.000 others. The explosion blew a hole 200 feet across in an underground parking garage and caused more than $300 million in damage. The source of the blast was determined to have been a bomb in a Ford van in the parking garage. Four men were tried in a long an complicated case in which the government calls 207 witnesses and presented 1.003 pieces of evidence. In May 1994 the four were to prison terms of 240 years. In 1997 two more men were convicted for arranging the bombing and recruiting others to help.

The hole complex had about 430 tenants and from 26 countries that employed 40.000 office workers. The World Trade Center did not only consist of the two towers but also of five other much smaller buildings around them. And the WTC is not the only one. There are about 300 WTC’s in 300 countries and over 500.000 companies are affiliated with WTC members world-wide.