World Trade Center (1973–2001)

The original World Trade Center (WTC) was a complex of seven buildings in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Built primarily between 1966 and 1975, it was dedicated on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed on September 11, 2001 after two hijacked planes were flown into the towers in a coordinated terrorist attack. The complex included the 110-story-tall Twin Towers, at the time of their completion the tallest buildings in the world, with the original 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower) at 1,368 feet (417 m), and 2 World Trade Center (the South Tower) at 1,362 feet (415.1 m); they were also the tallest twin skyscrapers in the world until 1996, when the Petronas Towers opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The other buildings in the complex were the Marriott World Trade Center (3 WTC), 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. The complex contained 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m2) of office space and, prior to its completion, was projected to accommodate an estimated 130,000 people. The core complex cost about $400 million (equivalent to $2.37 billion in 2024). David Rockefeller suggested the construction of a large office building complex to help stimulate urban renewal in Lower Manhattan, and his brother Nelson, then New York's 49th governor, signed the legislation to build it. The buildings at the complex were designed by Minoru Yamasaki. In 1998, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to privatize it by leasing the buildings to a private company