One World Trade Center – a.k.a. the “Freedom Tower” – will become the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere when workers raise the final section of its spire.
That was supposed to take place earlier this week, but weather conditions didn’t cooperate. One World Trade Center has been the tallest building in New York City for a year now – surpassing the Empire State Building on April 30, 2012. Its eventual height? 1,776 feet – which would make it around fifty feet higher than the Willis Tower in Chicago.
Only two buildings in the world – the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE, and the 1,971-foot Abraj Al Bait hotel in Mecca, Saudi Arabia – are taller.
One World Trade Center will overlook the National September 11 Memorial and Museum – which opened to the public on September 12, 2011. Built with a mix of 9/11 insurance money, taxpayer funds and private investment, One World Trade Center is expected to cost roughly $3.8 billion by the time of its completion.
The new building will be more than 300 feet taller than the twin towers of the original World Trade Center complex, which were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In fact in an eery reminder of that day, a piece of wreckage from one of the planes used in the attacks was found wedged between two buildings in a Manhattan alleyway just last week.
The land surveyor who made the discovery referred to the debris as “a piece of a murder weapon.”
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