7 World Trade Center

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7 World Trade Center
The new 7 World Trade Center (view from southeast)
The new 7 World Trade Center (view from southeast)
Information
Location 250 Greenwich Street
New York City, New York, United States
Status Complete
Constructed 2002-2006
Use Office
Height
Roof 750 ft (228 m)
Technical Details
Floor count 52
Floor area 1.7 million ft sq.
158,000 m sq.
Companies
Architect David Childs (S.O.M.)
Developer Silverstein Properties

7 World Trade Center (wtc7) is the name of two buildings in New York City: the first opened in 1987 and was destroyed on September 11, 2001; its replacement, the first World Trade Center address to be rebuilt, was finished in 2006.

The original 7 World Trade Center was on the superblock bound by Vesey, Washington, and Barclay Streets, and West Broadway. The new 7 World Trade Center is at the same location, but its eastern boundary is on Greenwich Street, with a public park occupying the block between Greenwich Street and West Broadway.

Contents

[edit] 1984–2001

A view of the original 7 WTC (on the left) taken on August 14, 1992.
A view of the original 7 WTC (on the left) taken on August 14, 1992.

The original Seven World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001, attacks, was built in the mid-1980s. Construction began in 1984; in March 1987, the building opened, to become the seventh structure of the World Trade Center. The building was built on top of a Con Edison substation dating from 1967.[1] The substation had a caisson foundation designed to carry the weight of a future building on the site.[1]

The original structure had 47 floors[2] and was 570 feet (174 m) [2] tall. Each floor had 47,000 square feet (4,366 m²) of rentable office space, which made the building's floor plans considerably larger than most other office buildings in the city.[3] In all, 7 World Trade Center had 1,868,000 square feet (174,000 m²) of office space.[4] The building was clad in red exterior masonry. A pedestrian bridge connected it to the main World Trade Center complex, to the south, across Vesey Street. Emery Roth & Sons[2] designed the building. The Center's management leased space to financial institutions, insurance companies, and government agencies.

7 World Trade Center housed Salomon Smith Barney; American Express Bank International; Standard Chartered Bank; Provident Financial Management; ITT Hartford Insurance Group; First State Management Group, Inc.; Federal Home Loan Bank; and NAIC Securities.

The position of Building 7 in relation to the other WTC buildings before September 11, 2001.
The position of Building 7 in relation to the other WTC buildings before September 11, 2001.

The government agencies housed at 7 World Trade Center were the Secret Service, the Department of Defense, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management, the Internal Revenue Service Regional Council (IRS), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). [5]

[edit] Collapse

Main article: Collapse of the World Trade Center

As the North Tower collapsed, debris hit WTC7 "with the force of a volcanic eruption."[6] Much of the bottom 10 stories of the building's south face were destroyed, with damage visible as high as the 18th floor. At 5:20 p.m. EDT on September 11, 2001, 7 World Trade Center collapsed. It had been evacuated and there were no casualties.

In May 2002, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a report on the collapse.[4] FEMA made preliminary findings that the collapse was primarily caused by fires on multiple stories (which were started by debris from the other two towers), and not by the actual impact damage from the collapse of 1 WTC and 2 WTC. The report noted that, before this collapse, there had been little, if any, record of the fire-induced collapse of a large fire-protected steel building, such as 7 WTC.

The report did not reach final conclusions about the cause of the collapse, but listed several issues requiring further investigation. FEMA made these findings:

Loss of structural integrity was likely a result of weakening caused by fires on the 5th to 7th floors. The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyzes are needed to resolve this issue. [Ch. 5, p. 31.]

In response to FEMA's concerns, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made a three-year, US$24-million investigation into the structural failure and collapse of several WTC structures, including 7 World Trade Center. The study drew not only on in-house technical expertise but also the knowledge of several outside private institutions, including the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE), the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).[7]

NIST has released video and still-photo analysis of Building 7 before its collapse that appears to indicate a greater degree of structural damage from falling debris than originally assumed by FEMA. Specifically, the NIST's interim report on 7 WTC displays photographs of the southwest façade of the building that show it to have significant damage. The NIST interim report on 7 WTC details a 10-story gash that existed on the south façade, extending a third of the way across the face of the building and approximately a quarter of the way into the interior, but does not provide any photographs of the damage to the south façade.[1] A unique aspect of the design of 7 WTC was that each outer structural column was responsible for supporting 2,000 square feet (186 square meters) of floor space, suggesting that the simultaneous removal of a number of columns would severely compromise the structure's integrity. Consistent with this theory, news footage shows visible cracking and bowing of the building's east wall immediately before the collapse, which began at the penthouse floors.[1]

NIST "anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007".[8][9] NIST released a progress report in June 2004, outlining its working hypothesis, which was that a local failure in a critical column, caused by damage from either fire or falling debris from the collapses of the two towers, progressed first vertically and then horizontally to result in "a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure".[10][11] In a New York magazine interview in March 2006, Dr S. Shyam Sunder, NIST's lead WTC disaster investigator, said, of 7 World Trade Center, "We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors”; he added "But truthfully, I don’t really know. We’ve had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7".[12]

Despite FEMA's preliminary finding that fire caused the collapse, conspiracy theorists believe the collapse was the result of a controlled demolition. When asked about controlled demolition theories, Dr. Sunder said, "We consulted 80 public-sector experts and 125 private-sector experts. It is a Who’s Who of experts. People look for other solutions. As scientists, we can’t worry about that. Facts are facts."[13] In answer to the question of whether "a controlled[-]demolition hypothesis is being considered to explain the collapse", NIST said that, "[w]hile NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, it would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements."[9]

As reported by the New York Times[14], the building had had some extreme renovative work done to it in 1989 to accommodate the needs of a new major tenant, the brokerage firm Salomon Brothers. Most of three existing floors were removed as tenants continued to occupy other floors, and then more than 350 (US) tons of steel were added to construct three double-height trading floors. Nine diesel generators were also installed on the fifth floor as part of a back-up power station. "Essentially, Salomon is constructing a building within a building - and it's an occupied building, which complicates the situation," said a district manager of Silverstein Properties. The unusual task was possible, said Larry Silverstein, because it was designed to allow for "entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors." [14]

[edit] 2002–2006: Building the new 7 World Trade Center

7 World Trade Center under construction in October 2004
7 World Trade Center under construction in October 2004
The new 7 World Trade Center
The new 7 World Trade Center

Construction of the new 7 World Trade Center began in 2002, and was completed in 2006 at a cost of $700 million.[15] The 52-story building is 750 feet (228 m) tall, and contains 1,700,000 square feet (158 000 m²) of leasable office space, starting at the 11th floor.[16] The first ten floors will house an electrical substation, which will power most of Lower Manhattan. The office tower has a narrower footprint at ground level than its predecessor, because the course of Greenwich Street has been restored in an effort to re-unite TriBeCa and the Financial District.

The architect was David Childs, of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who worked in conjunction with glass artist and designer James Carpenter. They used ultra-clear, low-iron glass to provide reflectivity and light, with stainless-steel spandrels behind the glass to help reflect sunlight.[15] Artist Jenny Holzer created a large light installation inside the main lobby, with glowing text moving across wide plastic panels.[15] The entire wall is about 30 meters wide by 7 meters tall; it changes color according to the time of day.

The building has 2-foot- (60-cm-) thick reinforced-concrete and fireproofed elevator and stairway access shafts, whereas the original building used only drywall to line these shafts. The stairways are wider than in the original building, to permit greater egress. Steel columns are encased in much thicker fire protection. The building is being promoted as the safest skyscraper in the U.S.[17] According to Silverstein Properties, the owner of the building, it "will incorporate a host of life-safety enhancements that will become the prototype for new high-rise construction".

7 World Trade Center is equipped with Otis destination elevators.[18] After entering their floor destination on a lobby keypad, passengers are grouped together and directed to specific elevators that will stop at their particular floor. There are no buttons to press inside the elevators. This system is designed to reduce elevator waiting and travel times.

The building is considered New York City's first "green" office tower, and gained gold status in the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED program.[19] Rainwater is collected and used for irrigation of the park, and to cool the building, and recycled steel was used in the building's construction.[15]

The triangular park was created by David Childs with Ken Smith and his colleague Annie Weinmayr, of Ken Smith Landscape Architect. It is between the now extended Greenwich Street and West Broadway, and comprises an open central plaza with a fountain and flanking groves of trees and shrubs. As the seasons change, so will the colors in the park, providing a natural complement to the adjacent tower. At the center of the fountain, sculptor Jeff Koons created Balloon Flower (Red), whose mirror-polished stainless steel represents a twisted balloon in the shape of a flower, at a monumental scale.

Building Seven was not included in the original World Trade Center master plan by Daniel Libeskind, but was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill under the leadership of David Childs, who largely redesigned the Freedom Tower.

The building was officially opened at noon on May 23, 2006 with a free concert sponsored by Larry Silverstein. The concert featured Suzanne Vega, Citizen Cope, Bill Ware Vibes, Brazilian Girls, Ollabelle, Pharaoh's Daughter, Ronan Tynan (of the Irish Tenors), and special guest Lou Reed.

From September 8 to October 7, 2006, the work of photographer Jonathan Hyman was displayed in "An American Landscape", a free exhibit on the 45th floor of 7 World Trade Center, hosted by the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.[20] The photographs captured the response of people in New York City and across the United States after the September 11, 2001, attacks. During the exhibit, the 45th floor was a large, empty concrete space; it will be turned into offices. From the 45th floor was also a 360-degree view of Lower Manhattan, Midtown Manhattan, the Hudson River, Brooklyn Bridge, and the World Trade Center site.

[edit] Tenants

View out the window of 7 World Trade Center's 45th floor, looking down at the World Trade Center site
View out the window of 7 World Trade Center's 45th floor, looking down at the World Trade Center site

As of March 2007, 60 percent of the building had been leased.[21] in addition to housing Silverstein Properties. The building has 42 floors of rentable space, with the first ten floors occupied by a Con Edison substation. In September 2006, Moody's signed a 20-year lease to rent 15 floors of 7 World Trade Center.[22]

Some current and future tenants:

[edit] Trivia

New World Trade Center
Towers
Freedom Tower (Tower 1)
200 Greenwich Street (Tower 2)
175 Greenwich Street (Tower 3)
150 Greenwich Street (Tower 4)
Tower 5
7 World Trade Center
Memorial and Museum
Reflecting Absence (Memorial)
International Freedom Center
Drawing Center
Transit
Transportation Hub
  • 7 WTC was the setting of the 1988 movie Working Girl (though the office scenes were filmed in another building). [28]
  • The 1933 Double Eagle was temporarily stored in the US Secret Service Vaults at 7 WTC. It was relocated to Fort Knox in July of 2001, before its record-breaking sale in New York for $7.59 million in 2002.
  • In March 2006, the new and unopened 7 WTC frontage and lobby were filmed in scenes for the movie Perfect Stranger with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. [29]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d Interim Report on WTC7. National Institute of Standards and Technology (June 2004).
  2. ^ a b c Seven World Trade Center (pre-9/11). Emporis.com. Retrieved on 2006-05-07.
  3. ^ Horsley, Carter B.. "Lower Manhattan Luring Office Developers", The New York Times, October 25, 1981.
  4. ^ a b WTC7 (Chapter 5), pdf. FEMA.
  5. ^ "CIA Lost Office In WTC: A secret office operated by the CIA was destroyed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, seriously disrupting intelligence operations'", CBSNews.com / AP, 2001, November 5, 2001.
  6. ^ Rosie O'Donnell 9/11 Conspiracy Comments: Popular Mechanics Responds. Popular Mechanics Weblog. Hearst Communications, Inc. (2007). Retrieved on 2007-03-31.
  7. ^ Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (September 2005).
  8. ^ McAllister, Therese (Decemeber 2006). WTC 7 Technical Approach and Status Summary.
  9. ^ a b Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. National Institute of Standards and Technology (August 2006).
  10. ^ Key Findings of NIST’s June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster. Fact sheets from NIST. National Institute of Standards and Technology (2004). Retrieved on 2006-07-28.
  11. ^ Interim Report on WTC 7 (pdf). Appendix L. National Institute of Standards and Technology (2004). Retrieved on 2006-07-28.
  12. ^ Mark Jacobson (March 2006). The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll. New York Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
  13. ^ Mark Jacobson (March 2006). The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll. New York Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
  14. ^ a b New York Times, 1989, February 19, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY: The Salomon Solution; A Building Within a Building, at a Cost of $200 Million, Mark McCain.
  15. ^ a b c d "7 World Trade Center completed, first major development at Ground Zero", Architectural Record, June 1, 2006.
  16. ^ Seven World Trade Center (post-9/11). Emporis.com. Retrieved on 2006-05-07.
  17. ^ Downtown Construction and Building Information. Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. Retrieved on 2006-05-22.
  18. ^ Angwin, Julia. "No-button elevators take orders in lobby", Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), November 19, 2006.
  19. ^ 7 World Trade Center Officially Certified as New York City's First ‘Green’ Office Tower. Silverstein Properties. Retrieved on 2006-05-26.
  20. ^ WTC Memorial Foundation Announces Photography Exhibitions to Mark 5th Anniversary of 9/11. World Trade Center Memorial Foundation (August 7, 2006).
  21. ^ Spitz, Rebecca. "9/11: Five Years Later: 7 World Trade Open For Business, Lacking Tenants", NY1 News, 2006, August 31.
  22. ^ "Moody's Signs Lease at 7 WTC", Associated Press/MSN Money, 2006-09-18.
  23. ^ Ameriprise Financial to lease 20,000 SF at 7 WTC. Silverstein Properties (2006, January 4).
  24. ^ Darby & Darby P.C. to move headquarters to 7 WTC. Darby & Darby (2006, August 24).
  25. ^ Mansueto Ventures signs lease at 7 World Trade Center to become the first corporate tenant to locate its national headquarters in the building. Silverstein Properties (2006, July 26).
  26. ^ "Pricey Midtown Rents Mean Big Tenant for 7 WTC", Gothamist, 2006, June 20.
  27. ^ "New York Academy of Sciences Signs Lease at 7 WTC", New York Academy of Sciences, 2005, December 16.
  28. ^ Filming Locations for Working Girl. IMDB.
  29. ^ "Under Cover, Tower 7 is no ‘Stranger’ to fame", Downtown Express, 2006, March 17-23.

[edit] External links

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