Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the September 19,
2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Twin Towers: The History
The World Trade Center was conceived in optimism.
This reminder comes from Angus Gillespie, professor of American
Studies
at Rutgers, and author of Twin Towers: The Life of New York’s
World Trade Center (Rutgers University Press, 1999). "When
the World Trade Center was first discussed," says Gillespie,
"JFK
was giving his `We have to send a man to the moon’ speech. It was
a period of great national euphoria. The sky was the limit."
It was in this spirit that the Port Authority set out to build the
tallest building in the world. The twin towers didn’t retain bragging
rights for long. Soon, the Sears Tower in Chicago pushed farther into
the sky, but, says Gillespie, that building "never gripped
people’s
imagination." The twin towers, never a hit with architecture
critics,
did exert a strong pull on the imagination — both at home and
abroad.
Located near Wall Street, traditional heart of the nation’s financial
engine, the towers, says Gillespie, still speaking in the present
tense, "stand not just for New York City, but for American
Capitalism.
For the American way of life."
Gillespie spent 10 years researching his book. Building managers took
him on a tour of the towers’ six-story basement, and brought him onto
the roof of the north tower. He spent time with any number of World
Trade Center employees. He expects that some of them perished with
the building, but he does not yet know.
Gillespie heard the news of the attack on the twin towers as he sat
at home in New Brunswick with his morning coffee and newspaper.
"My
older son called me as he was driving down Easton Avenue," he
recounts. "He heard it on the radio. I turned on the TV, and saw
the smoke. I thought the firemen would come and the fire would be
put out. I never thought it could collapse."
Here is an excerpt from Gillespie’s book that talks about how the
World Trade Center came to consist of two tall towers and a number
of smaller buildings, and why the tower were constructed as they were:
Pick up almost any serious book on American
architecture,
and you will look in vain for mention of the World Trade Center. The
few books that do mention the building do so with disparaging
language.
How did it happen that something so important, a universally
recognized
symbol of American abundance, came to be disregarded and disrespected
by those who take architecture most seriously? There is a
disconnection
between elite culture and popular culture because nearly every
guidebook
to New York City lists the Twin Towers among the city’s top 10
attractions.
One important key to explaining the contradiction between highbrow
architecture books and lowbrow guidebooks is to take a close took
at the project’s architect, Minoru Yamasaki. In the first place, we
must remember that for his whole life in America, he was an outsider,
a foreigner. In overcoming a life subjected to prejudice, Yamasaki
had developed extraordinary qualities of individualism and
self-reliance.
He was an outsider in at least three important ways. In the first
place, he was Japanese, placing him squarely outside the world of
elite WASP architects. Second, he was from the Midwest. His most
productive
years of architectural practice had taken place in Michigan,
unconnected
to the world of wealthy clients in New York. But most important, there
was a matter of style. Yamasaki was working in an architectural idiom
perhaps best described as the New Formalism, which never caught on.
The New Formalism was an attempt to get away from the International
Style, which had dominated the 1920s and 1930s. What no one knew for
sure at the time was that the next style to become fashionable would
not be the New Formalism but post-modernism, which came to dominate
the 1970s and 1980s.
The clients were impressed with Yamasaki’s grasp of the many
engineering
problems such as sun control and the relationship of glass to wall.
So it was in late August, 1962, that Minoru Yamasaki got the job.
It was a bold choice.
Yamasaki was turning away from the flat, glassy buildings of the
International
Style. His travels led him to embrace tradition and history. He became
fascinated with one of the oldest preoccupations of classical
architecture:
How do you design a building so as to take maximum advantage of the
change in light experienced from sunrise to sunset? He began to speak
out against the monotony of the facades of the International Style.
At first Yamasaki was not sure how to solve the problem of buildings
with dull faces. An early idea was to come up with some kind of
stamping
and precasting of metal to yield more interesting surfaces. It took
some time to come up with a distinguishing treatment for the faces
of his buildings.
Yamasaki’s distancing himself from the International
Style stemmed from his dislike of the "all-glass" building,
which was actually about 60 percent glass. In such buildings, Yamasaki
had intense feeling of acrophobia, especially when standing next to
a large pane of glass in a tall building. Instead of having the secure
feeling of being inside a building, he felt as if he could just tumble
through the glass and fall.
At the same time, he realized that with no windows at all occupants
would have a sense of claustrophobia. The challenge was to provide
people with the pleasure of looking out the windows and enjoying the
view while still having the security of being inside a structure and
enjoying its protection. By the time he designed the World Trade
Center,
Yamasaki had worked this problem out to his satisfaction. He gave
the building windows that were shoulder-width and spanned from floor
to ceiling. A person could lean right up against the frame of the
windows and look out and down with no fear of falling. The percentage
of glass in the World Trade Center is 30, about half that of an
International
Style building.
All in all, Yamasaki worked with more than 100 schemes. Somewhere
between the 20th and 40th attempt, he hit upon the idea of a pair
of towers. He felt that he was on the right track, but he continued
on with another 60 schemes just to be sure. At first the two buildings
were only 80 or 90 stories high. Only later did Yamasaki agree to
push the design to 110 stories. It took 15 months from getting his
commission to presenting a detailed plan to Austin Tobin and the Port
Authority commissioners. Next came the enormous task of designing
the buildings in detail.
In large measure Yamasaki’s design followed logically from engineering
considerations. The exterior walls carry the weight of the structure
as well as providing bracing against the stress and strain of lateral
winds. The entire building perimeter acts as a strong tube. The outer
wall consists of closely spaced vertical columns.
Some critics felt that the view from Yamasaki’s 22-inch windows was
too limiting. Yamasaki responded, "The purpose of buildings is
to have comfortable working areas and not to be observatories where
one stares out the window at the view all day long. The windows are
amply wide and sufficiently close together for both a dramatic outlook
and little sense of claustrophobia.
Once having decided on narrow windows, the next decision had to do
with the choice of exterior wall material. Because the actual weight
of the building was supported by closely spaced vertical steel
columns,
the exterior material could be very thin and lightweight since all
it had to do was to keep in heat and keep out cold and dampness. As
long as these "curtain walls" were waterproof, they could
be made of just about any permanent material.
A skyscraper is by definition a tall building. The term
suggests that the building will "scrape the sky." From the
beginning, Yamasaki planned on very tall buildings. However, as we
have already seen in chapter 2, the initial idea for making the World
Trade Center "the tallest in the world" was not Yamasaki’s.
The idea originated with Lee K. Jaffe, in the public relations office
of the Port Authority. Jaffe knew the idea would appeal to her bosses,
Austin Tobin and Guy Tozzoli, because the culture of the agency
promoted
a sense of manliness and an almost compulsive competitiveness. The
contest to build the tallest skyscraper in the world was an American
preoccupation for the first three-quarters of the 20th century. For
most of that period, the tallest skyscrapers were found in New York
City, although in the end Chicago took the prize. As we approach the
end of the 20th century, Americans seem to have given up the fight
as the battle has shifted to the Pacific Rim.
For a long time, the Empire State Building was secure in its title
of "the world’s tallest skyscraper." Serious challenges were
not attempted during the Depression and were not possible during World
War II. The Empire State Building became a landmark and a familiar
yardstick against which big things like ocean liners were measured.
There was an office building boom in the 1950s, but nothing
particularly
tall was built. "As a result," according to architectural
historian Anthony Robins, "the Empire State held the title for
so long that, unlike its predecessors, it seemed to `have a permanent
claim. The World Trade Center proposal in 1964 came as a rude
shock’."
The World Trade Center’s bid to surpass the Empire State Building
in height was opposed by the threatened owners of the older landmark.
They put up a good fight and succeeded in delaying the new project
for months. Of course, in the end the World Trade Center won the
battle,
measuring 1,368 feet in height. What is amazing to most people is
the intensity of emotion surrounding New York’s battle of the
skyscrapers.
Devotees of the Empire State Building have never forgiven the Port
Authority for topping the classic midtown skyscraper.
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
Facebook Comments