I was doing some research on the new Freedom tower that is being built in New York City on the site of the World Trade Center. It will stand 1,776 feet tall (in honor of the year 1776) and was going to be the tallest building in the U.S. However, Chicago decided to make their skyscraper the Fordham Spire, 2,000 feet tall, making it the tallest in the U.S.


Maybe I am making a big deal out of this, but considering the symbolism that the Freedom Tower will represent, shouldn't it be the tallest? It was like the folks over in Chicago heard that NY was going to build a taller building that the Sears tower in Chicago and they had to "one up" the design. The Freedom tower will not go any higher that 1,776 feet because of the symbolism of that number.


Oh well, I guess I am making a big deal out of it. lol

Please, please, no more skyscrapers! They're more trouble than they're worth! They completely disregard the human scale, and most of them are ugly! Let's keep the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, a couple of others here and there, and demolish the rest of them! Liberty Place in Philadelphia and the Hancock Building in Boston should be the first to go! And the Renaissance Center in Detroit should go down with them!

New York can still go up higher, just not with this particular tower. But Chicago was the birthplace of the skyscraper and it seems as if they want to keep it tops. And rightly so since it has the best skyline in the world, no contest. But in the end, it's not really about the height, it's about the overall design. And I'm not all that fond of this new tower. None of the proposals were really all that appealing tho. Fordham Spire however, is fantastic and I can't wait for it to go up.

Refresh my memory. How tall were the Twin Towers?

Refresh my memory. How tall were the Twin Towers?

110 stories, so about 1,100 feet. The Sears Tower is taller.

1,368 feet to be exact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center

Sears has been the tallest since '74 and still the tallest by antenna height and highest occupable floor. Technically, Petronas and Taipei101 are taller, but only because the spires are higher than the roof of Sears Tower. It's a cheat just to boost up the total height in my opinion, so I don't like them. But Sears will forever be the greatest Skyscraper ever to be built. Nothing will ever come close to it's class, mass, and magnitude.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Skyscrapercompare1.PNG/756px-Skyscrapercompare1.PNG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Sears_Tower_ss.jpg/466px-Sears_Tower_ss.jpg

Well, I don't know about anybody else here... but I feel that I was meant to be a city girl. I really like looking at buildings and skyscrapers. When I was in NYC earlier this year, I couldn't stop looking at the buildings- there are so many neat buildings and skyscrapers in Manhattan. I REALLY liked the buildings/skyscrapers that are near Battery Park in lower Manhattan. I really liked the building in the third picture, the hollowed-out section about 1/3 of the way up is pretty neat.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/pzelda_nyc/DSCN4066.jpg

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/pzelda_nyc/DSCN4067.jpg

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/pzelda_nyc/DSCN4068.jpg

I don't really care how tall the Freedom Tower is going to be... but I am sure that it will be pleasing to the eye once it is built. I really liked looking at the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building when I was in NYC- they are both so pleasing to the eye, and very beautiful at night. I love how they switch out the colors at the top of the Empire State Building during a major holiday... I got to see green lights at the top at night when I was there, since I was in New York over St. Patty's Day.

So, it's the kind of thing that interests me. New York is sooooo fascinating to me. :lol:

110 stories, so about 1,100 feet. The Sears Tower is taller.

1,368 feet to be exact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center


The North Tower was 1368 feet, the South Tower six feet shorter. Don't ask me how that happened.

I don't think it needs to be the tallest. I just think that some type of construction on a new World Trade Center and a memorial should have been started by now.

I :heart: New York so I say make that tower the tallest in the world........ :clap:

I don't think it needs to be the tallest. I just think that some type of construction on a new World Trade Center and a memorial should have been started by now.
Didn't they just finish building a new WTC 7? I just heard about it the other day. There were seven WTC buildings total, and three of them (WTC 1, 2 and 7) collapsed on 9/11. The others (3, 4, 5 and 6) were razed soon after 9/11, since they suffered tremendous damage from the falling rubble of WTC 1 and 2.

A quick Google search gave me this on the new 7 World Trade Center building (http://www.lowermanhattan.info/construction/project_updates/7_world_trade_center_75464.aspx).

Didn't they just finish building a new WTC 7? I just heard about it the other day. There were seven WTC buildings total, and three of them (WTC 1, 2 and 7) collapsed on 9/11. The others (3, 4, 5 and 6) were razed soon after 9/11, since they suffered tremendous damage from the falling rubble of WTC 1 and 2.


Yes, the new WTC 7 was completed in May. It's currently half-vacant, of course. :rolleyes:

The original WTC 7 was aded to the complex in 1984 as an afterthought, on the other side of Vesey Street. To connect it to the complex, they turned Vesey Street into a pedestrian zone, and. . . , Aw, heck, I'm kidding - they wouldn't close of a street in New York to automobile traffic! No, really, they built a pedestrian bridge over Vesey Street to connect WTC 7 to the rest of the trade center.

The Juliiard School at Linclon Center was also connected to the rest of the arts center by a pedestrian bridge over West 65th Street, but they're tearing it down now.

I don't know about being the tallest. I don't like real tall buildings. I wonder if they'll have a problem with people not wanting to work there. I know I wouldn't.

Personally, I love the Chrysler building.

http://www.esto.com/portfimages/85m16_8.jpg

I think it should be among the tallest but, more importantly, I think it should be the safest and its design should discourage attack.

I drew up plans last year for my idea of a safe building at ground zero and this is what I came up with:

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/6323/safe2bp8.png

Not sure how architectually correct it is but there it is.

The above pic is actually an older draft. The final draft has only three minerets in order to fit in the footprint designated for construction.

A cheap way to make a building (or tower) the world's tallest structure, is throwing up a longer pole at the top of it.

Anybody can beat it. :lol: