Relax, New York — One World Trade Center is officially America’s tallest building. So decided an august panel of architects Tuesday morning, which demoted Chicago’s Willis Tower to No. 2. Now let’s get on with what really matters: leasing up the rest of the skyscraper and finishing the entire new World Trade Center.
The judgement by an obscure Chicago-based organization ended a year of suspense. Poor 1 WTC has been the city’s most contentious single structure since the Dutch built Wall Street’s earth-and-wood barrier to fend off Indian raids.
It has emerged serene and comfortable in its skin, but only after years of vicious political infighting, wholesale redesigns, ownership changes and even getting bumped from its original planned site.
To have its “iconic” 1776-foot height ruled invalid would have been the final indignity. You’d think it wouldn’t take brain surgeons to figure out that a structure rising to 1,776 feet is taller than one a mere 1,451 feet.
But it wasn’t so clear-cut to some architects, nit-pickers and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The panel has become the arbiter of disputes over whether a skyscraper’s top is really a spire, and thus part of the architecture, or merely an antenna.
At 1 WTC, the issue was further clouded when its owners, the Port Authority and the Durst Organization, last year decided to yank a planned, sculptural enclosure of fiberglass and steel off the 408-foot tall mast in order to save $20 million. The decision embittered architect David Childs, the tower’s chief designer who also saw his original scheme for its cubical base replaced by a cheaper one.
The Tall Buildings sages decided the mast is “still an architectural element.” So the thoroughly boring Willis (formerly Sears) Tower will have to live with its Second City, second-tallest booby prize.
Of course, bragging rights over 1 WTC’s North American status mean zilch in a world where a half-dozen cloudbusting towers have eclipsed it. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa rises to a mind-boggling 2717 feet. Towers taller than 1 WTC also stand in Shanghai, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur.
The once predominant Empire State Building now holds down the lowly No. 20 spot.
But nobody who comes to see 1 WTC is likely to be counting. Visitors will marvel over a new World Trade Center as skyline-commanding as the old Twin Towers were, but vastly more humane.
They’ll enjoy views from the world’s best-designed observation deck. And New Yorkers will appreciate a structure so triumphantly appealing after all its birth pangs that it drew the great media company Conde Nast to a new home downtown.
Right now, 1 WTC has leased just over half of its 3 million square feet of office space. In today’s slow market, finding tenants for the rest might take a while. But fill it they will, as surely as the address says “New York.”
That will be the day for a real celebration.