Designed by the architect Minoru Yamasaki and built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the North Tower rose to 1,368 feet and the South Tower to 1,362 feet. Critics derided the towers as oversized filing cabinets, and much of their office space was empty at first. The ribbon-cutting took place on April 4, 1973. Within a year, Chicago's Sears Tower surpassed them in height. The towers were destroyed in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The World Trade Center was conceived in the 1950s by David Rockefeller as a way to revive Lower Manhattan, and the Port Authority took on the project in the 1960s. Building it meant clearing 13 blocks, including the electronics shops of Radio Row, whose owners fought the demolition in court and lost. Excavated earth from the site was used to create land on the Hudson River that later became Battery Park City.
Minoru Yamasaki designed the towers with narrow windows and closely spaced steel columns on their exteriors, which carried much of the load and allowed large open office floors. The structure was novel, and each tower's façade was clad in aluminum that caught the light at different times of day. Many architects and critics disliked the scale and the plain plaza; Lewis Mumford called them examples of "purposeless giantism".
At the dedication on April 4, 1973, the towers were not full; the state of New York leased large amounts of space to fill them. Their reputation changed over time. In August 1974 Philippe Petit walked a wire between the roofs, and the towers came to be embraced as symbols of the city.
Key people: Minoru Yamasaki, Austin J. Tobin, Nelson Rockefeller