One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet, is indeed taller than the Willis Tower in Chicago, which measures 1,450 feet. That judgment was delivered on Tuesday by the official arbiter of structural stature, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
While comparing the heights of two office buildings may sound like child’s play, the decision was not so simple, according to Timothy Johnson, the chairman of the council. The measuring was complicated by the long mast that stands atop the trade center tower.
Without that mast, the new skyscraper in Lower Manhattan is indisputably shorter than the Willis Tower, which had been the tallest building in the country since it was completed — and named the Sears Tower — in 1974. But the mast, which New Yorkers call a spire but Chicagoans see as a mere antenna, adds about 400 feet to the trade center building, which is scheduled to open next year.
Mr. Johnson said there was plenty of discussion about the purpose of the mast when the 25 members of the council’s height committee met Friday in Chicago. In order to be counted as part of the building, the mast had to be deemed a permanent part of the architectural expression of the building.
The chief architect of 1 World Trade Center, David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, told the committee that the mast should be counted, in part, because the building was designed with the intention of having the symbolic height of 1,776 feet. He had, however, referred to the mast in the past as an antenna.
In the end, the committee was in agreement, Mr. Johnson said.
“The building is in fact 1,776 feet,” he said. “We don’t believe the spire will ever be removed.”
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
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