http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/201...emisphere.html
As spire grows higher, 1 WTC is Manhattan's new skyline centerpiece
By Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger
February 26, 2013
Quote:
Looking up from across the Hudson, or down from the roof, the view is impressive even to those not easily impressed. With its still-unfinished spire now reaching almost 1,500 feet in the air and rising, One World Trade Center as seen from the New Jersey Turnpike Extension — or many other vantage points in the state’s northeastern corner — stands head and shoulders above surrounding skyscrapers, putting a new peak on the Lower Manhattan skyline that had been missing since Sept. 11.
"When you think of tall buildings and the role they play, it’s that image of the skyline," said Kevin Brass, a spokesman for the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an international arbiter of building heights. "When you think of the skyline of New York going back before 9/11, it becomes the image of the city, so now the tower is going to create a new image for that city that will be visible for miles."
But if One World Trade Center looks tall from the New Jersey Turnpike Extension, the 360-degree rooftop vista is downright extraterrestrial. To the west, the 780-foot Goldman Sachs Tower in Jersey City, New Jersey’s tallest building, looks like a walk-up. The mighty Hudson River is a mere stream trickling over the horizon, while the jagged line of the majestic Palisades is reduced to a crack in the sidewalk. Even 1 WTC’s only panoramic rival, the Empire State Building, seems far less formidable than from more earthly vantage points. Members of the public will almost be able to see for themselves after the building opens early next year, from a public observatory on the 102nd floor.
Guiding a recent tour of the building, Steve Plate, the man in charge of World Trade Center construction for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stood on the roof of the tower amid four house-sized air-conditioning units 1,368 feet above Vesey Street, craning his neck to look up.
Guiding a recent tour of the building, Steve Plate, the man in charge of World Trade Center construction for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stood on the roof of the tower amid four house-sized air-conditioning units 1,368 feet above Vesey Street, craning his neck to look up. With New Jersey, New York and the rest of the Earth falling away from him in every direction, Plate’s attention was fixed on the only people higher in the overcast sky than he was: a crew lowering the latest section of the tower’s concrete rooftop spire into place, raising the tower’s total height to more than 1,470 feet.
Soaring a total of 408 feet above the roof when completed, the tapering, masonry spire will play a significant role in how the tower is viewed by the rest of the world. The completed, 18-piece spire will eventually bring the tower’s overall height to 1,776 feet. Aside from its symbolic reference to the year the United States declared independence, the height could qualify One World Trade Center as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, if the Council on Tall Buildings declares the spire an architectural element of the tower, and not merely antennae.
By last week, even the unfinished spire had already pole-vaulted 1 WTC’s overall height above the 1,450-foot roof height of the Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly the Sears Tower, the hemisphere’s reigning tallest building. Brass, the building council spokesman, said the group’s height committee will issue a determination after 1 WTC’s official dedication.
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Last edited by NYguy; Feb 26, 2013 at 1:57 PM.
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