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World War Two was over, and we had many accomplishments. For one thing, in 1931, the Empire State Building opened. Americans were scared of the communism in Moscow and Beijing, so we wanted to build a building of peace, a "World Trade Facility." The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey became interested in this idea around 1950. They chose a big piece of land in lower Manhattan, owned by Hudson and Manhattan railroads, and bought it. Located in the site was 30 and 50 Church street, the largest office buildings in the world at that time! Minoru Yamasaki, part of the firm to design the Empire State Building, was put to the job.

Austin Tobin, the head of the Port Authority, would own these very unique buildings. Alan Reiss, the director of these towers when they were first built, and the WTC director, Frank DeMartini who is now among the missing, were also involved. The WTC was to be very different from any skyscraper built previously. For instance, skyscrapers before had been put together by piling layer upon layer of steel, kind of like blocks, making the outside just decoration. Finally, Ray Monty came up with a solution. The WTC plan was that the building would be supported by the outside; therefore no beams would be needed inside.

By 1964, after many big changes, the WTC design plan was complete, and in 1966, construction began. Well, easier said than done. 181,400 metric tons of structural steel were needed to build the World Trade Center. Not only that, the building required 70 feet of bedrock to be excavated, which was used as landfill in Battery Park, and 23 mile foundations to be dug! There were 100,000 truckloads of landfills, and $17,000,000 worth of land. To construct these buildings, the engineers used self powered "Kangaroo cranes" which came from Australia, which is where they get their name. Ironically, the first piece that the crane lifted is the only piece that was left standing after September 11th.

The Port Authority ran into some problems also. By March, 1969, the towers began to rise, and on April 4th, 1973, the monstrous buildings were complete. The WTC was 100 feet taller than the Empire State Building. Tower 1 was 417.5 m. tall, and 521 m. tall with its TV mast, and tower 2 was 415.5 m. tall! Each weighed approximatly1.5 million tons, and had 198 miles of heating. They also had about 23,000 fluorescent lights, 10,000,000 square feet of space, 43,600 windows, and 95 passenger elevators, which included 23 express, and 72 local, going 27 feet per second! Sometimes, smaller things on skyscrapers are forgotten. For instance, each of those 43,600 wiindows had to be washed every once in a while. To do that, a specially designed window washing machine, one per tower, was created. It took 1/2 hour to wash one vertical stripe of windows! These amazingly high numbers broke some records. The wtc took 30 and 50 church street's place as the tallest office building, by fitting 500 international companies, enough work for over 50,000 people! It also took the Sears tower (located in Chicago)'s place as the tallest building in the world!

Construction of the wtc was estimated to be 350 million dollars, but turned out to be 800 million dollars, not including the annual payment of 25 million dollars to the construction workers during the years of delayed construction. As you can see, the center costed a huge amount of money. Was it worth it? The city, after seeing the huge masterpiece, decided it was.