NEW YORK — One World Trade Center, the giant monolith being built to replace the twin towers destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, will lay claim to the title of New York City’s tallest skyscraper today. Workers will erect steel columns that will make its unfinished skeleton a little over 1,250 feet high, just enough to peek over the roof of the observation deck on the Empire State Building.
The milestone is a preliminary one. Workers are still adding floors to the so-called “Freedom Tower,” and it isn’t expected to reach its full height for at least another year, at which point it is likely to be declared the tallest building in the U.S. and third-tallest in the world.
Those bragging rights, though, will carry an asterisk.
Crowning the world’s tallest buildings is a little like picking the heavyweight champion in boxing. There is often disagreement about who deserves the belt.
In this case, the issue involves the 408-foot-tall needle that will sit on the tower’s roof.
Count it, and the World Trade Center is back on top. Otherwise, it will have to settle for No. 2, after the Willis Tower in Chicago.
“Height is complicated,” said Nathaniel Hollister, a spokesman for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats, a Chicago-based organization considered an authority on such records.
Experts and architects have long disagreed about where to stop measuring super-tall buildings outfitted with masts, spires and antennas that extend far above the roof.
Consider the case of the Empire State Building: Measured from the sidewalk to the tip of its needlelike antenna, the granddaddy of all super-tall skyscrapers stands 1,454 feet high, well above the mark being surpassed by One World Trade Center today.
Purists, though, say antennas shouldn’t count when determining building height.
An antenna, they say, is more like furniture than a piece of architecture. Like a chair sitting on a rooftop, an antenna can be attached or removed. The Empire State Building didn’t even get its distinctive antenna until 1952. The record books, as the argument goes, shouldn’t change every time someone installs a new satellite dish.
The Council on Tall Buildings is leaning toward giving One World Trade the benefit of the doubt.
“This is something we have discussed with the architect,” Hollister said. “As we understand it, the needle is an architectural spire which happens to enclose an antenna. We would thus count it as part of the architectural height.”
Hollister also pointed out that, technically speaking, One World Trade Center isn’t a record-holder in any category yet, as it is still unfinished.
As for the world’s tallest building, the undisputed champion is the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, which opened in 2010 and reaches 2,717 feet. Not counting about 5 feet of aircraft lights and other equipment perched on top, of course.
Scraping the skies
The tallest completed buildings in the United States, as measured from the lowest public entrance to the highest architectural element, not including antennas.
1. Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), Chicago, 1974: 1,451 feet
2. Trump International Hotel and Tower, Chicago, 2009: 1,389 feet
3. Empire State Building, New York, 1931: 1,250 feet
4. Bank of America Tower, New York, 2009: 1,200 feet
5. Aon Center, Chicago, 1973: 1,136 feet
Source: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats
