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Article: World Trade Center
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WORLD TRADE CENTER
WORLD TRADE CENTER,
a seven-building complex that was located on a sixteen-acre site in lower Manhattan in New York City. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey financed the $958 million cost of construction. The architect Minoru Yamasaki designed the two 110-story towers (numbers 1 and 2 World Trade) in the International Style; the Twin Towers, as they were called, were to be the tallest buildings in the world, a record they held in 1973. To achieve that height, the engineering firm of Worthington-Skilling recommended a tube structure in which columns on the exterior walls, and the inner core of the skyscrapers, bore the gravity load. A grill of lightweight ...