Tallness Experts Gather to Debate WTC Height

Hundreds of red, white and blue LED modules are illuminating lower Manhattan as officials test the lights atop 1 World Trade Center.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said Friday the beacon is packed with nearly 300 modules and their glow can be seen for up to 50 miles.

Rising from the ashes of 9/11, the new World Trade Center tower has punched above the New York skyline to reach its powerfully symbolic height of 1,776 feet and become the tallest building in the country. Or has it?

A committee of architects recognized as the arbiters on world building heights met Friday to decide whether a design change affecting the skyscraper’s 408-foot needle disqualifies it from being counted. Disqualification would deny the tower the title as the nation’s tallest.

But there is more than bragging rights at stake; 1 World Trade Center stands as a monument to those killed in the terrorist attacks, and the ruling could dim the echo of America’s founding year in the structure’s height. Without the needle, the building measures 1,368 feet, a number that also holds symbolic weight as the height of the original World Trade Center.

What’s more, the decision is being made by an organization based in Chicago, whose cultural and architectural history is embodied by the Willis — formerly Sears — Tower that would be knocked into second place by a vote in favor of the New York structure.

“Most of the time these decisions are not so controversial,” said Daniel Safarik, an architect and spokesman for the nonprofit Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The 30 members of its Height Committee are meeting to render a judgment behind closed doors in Chicago, where the world’s first skyscraper appeared in 1884.

The committee, comprised of industry professionals from all over the world, will announce its decision this week.

Safarik said the committee could consider amending its height criteria — a move with much broader implications that could force a reshuffle in the rankings of the tallest buildings in the world.

If the matter weren’t so steeped in emotion it might have set off some of the good natured ribbing emblematic of the history of one-upmanship between New York and Chicago. But 1 World Trade Center is a monument to American resilience admired well beyond Manhattan.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to argue with the pride in building that new tower,” said 31-year-old software developer Brett Tooley, who works across the street from the Willis Tower. “Not only is it going to be the tallest building; it’s going to be one of the strongest buildings in the history of America. It’s a marvel of engineering.”

“We take our hats off to them out here in Chicago and the Midwest,” said Robert Wislow, chairman and chief executive of U.S. Equities, the firm that manages the Willis Tower. “And we welcome the building to the elite club of the tallest buildings in the world. Nobody’s looking at this like a competition.”

Still, the Willis has a central place in Chicago’s history, speaking to the city’s own tradition of recovering from adversity ever since the 1871 Great Fire and its history of creating architectural marvels, said Peter Alter, an archivist at the Chicago History Museum.

And the Willis can still claim to get visitors up higher: The highest occupied floor in the 1,450-foot (not including antenna height), 110-story Willis Tower is still higher up than that of the 104-story 1 World Trade Center. In a sign of just how in dispute building measurements can be, the council says the Willis has 108 floors.

At the Willis’s 103rd floor, thrill-seekers can step out into one of the glass boxes known as The Ledge that extend outside the building’s steel frame and look straight down 1,353 feet.

In New York, the debate was upsetting to Jim Riches, a retired fire department deputy chief who lost his 29-year-old firefighter son, Jimmy, in the terrorist attack.

“You know what? I think it’s a ridiculous argument. It doesn’t matter to me what height it is,” he said. “You know, my son’s not going to walk back in that door again. And that’s the big thing. He’s gone.”

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the November 12th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.