The World Trade Center site, formerly known as “Ground Zero” after the September 11 attacks, is a 14.6-acre (59,000 m2) area in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The previous World Trade Center complex stood on the site until it was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Silverstein Properties, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation oversee the reconstruction of the site according to a master plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind. The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north, the West Side Highway to the west, Liberty Street to the south, and Church Street to the east. The Port Authority owns the site’s land (except for 7 World Trade Center). Developer Larry Silverstein holds the lease to retail and office space in four of the site’s buildings.
While the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is often identified as the owner of the WTC site, the ownership situation is complex. The Port Authority indeed owns a “significant” internal portion of the site of 16 acres (65,000 m2), but has acknowledged “ambiguities over ownership of miscellaneous strips of property at the World Trade Center site” going back to the 1960s. It is unclear who owns 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) of the site, being land where streets had been before the World Trade Center was built.
Original buildings and September 11 attacks
The original World Trade Center was thought of as a North American cultural icon.[citation needed] At the time of their completion the “Twin Towers”, the original 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower), at 417 metres (1,368 ft), and 2 World Trade Center (the South Tower), were the tallest buildings in the world. The other buildings in the complex included the Marriott World Trade Center (3 WTC), 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. All of these buildings were built between 1975 and 1985, with a construction cost of $400 million (equivalent to $2,300,000,000 in 2015 dollars). The complex was located in New York City’s Financial District and contained 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m2) of office space.
The World Trade Center experienced a fire on February 13, 1975, a bombing on February 26, 1993 and a robbery on January 14, 1998. In 1998, the Port Authority decided to privatize the World Trade Center, leasing the buildings to a private company to manage, and awarded the lease to Silverstein Properties in July 2001.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, both which were en route to Los Angeles, and intentionally crashed them into the two towers of the World Trade Center. The towers collapsed within two hours of the collisions.[ 2,606 people, including 2,192 civilians, 71 law enforcement officers, and 343 firefighters, who were in the towers and in the surrounding area died in the attacks, as well as 147 civilians and the 10 hijackers aboard the two airliners. After the collapse of the World Trade Center, hospital workers and law enforcement officers began referring to the World Trade Center site as “Ground Zero”.
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