LECTURE: The Twin Towers – Remembering the World Trade Center

Sponsored by the Scarsdale Adult School. For information and reservations, click here.

Now that more than a decade has passed since the disaster of September 11th, 2001, and a new World Trade Center rises on the site, we can begin to remember what the original was like — “a city-within-a-city” that housed 50,000 employees, and welcomed 80,000 to 100,000 visitors every day to its Twin Towers, briefly the tallest structures in the world.

Based on the book Classics of American Architecture: The World Trade Center, this lecture reviews the story of its creation, post-World War II Downtown redevelopment, the origins of the Trade Center concept, the search for an architect, the evolution of the design, the urge to build the world’s tallest buildings, the engineering feats required for the towers’ construction, and the critical response. It is offered as a reminder of a more innocent time, when the Center stood as a symbol, certainly, of hubris, wealth and power, but also of the conviction that in New York, Americans could do anything to which they set their minds.