ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER The glass and stainless steel of One sparkle The building rises into the World Trade Center make the tower blue sky as part of the Manhattan skyline It stands 1,776 feet 541 m from its base to the tip of its spire This number is symbolic It represents the year the nation’s founders signed the Declaration of Independence The tower soars above all other buildings in New York City Nicknamed the Freedom Tower it became the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere when completed One World Trade center sits among many other skyscrapers in Manhattan
BUILDING BIGGER During the late 1800s cities became crowded with people Space became expensive and scarce Builders solved the problem by building taller buildings The first skyscraper was built in Chicago in 1885 It had ten floors Over time new technology made it possible to build taller structures By 2017 the world’s tallest building was the Burj Khalifa It is in Dubai United Arab Emirates The tower stands 2,716 feet 828 m tall It has 163 floors The Burj Khalifa was designed by the same architecture firm that worked on One World Trade Center Skyscrapers are extremely tall buildings Their dozens of floors are used for apartments or office space One World Trade Center has 104 floors It is one of five buildings in the 16-acre 6 5-ha World Trade Center complex At the building’s base water gently cascades down 30 feet 9 1 m into two memorial pools The pools mark the sites where the two former World Trade Center towers once stood These buildings were called the Twin Towers A terrorist attack destroyed them on September 11 2001 6
The huge memorial pools help visitors appreciate the enormous size of the former Twin Towers The planning and building of One World Trade Center was a long complicated process Construction began in 2006 The tower finally opened for business in 2014 One World Trade Center is a masterpiece of architecture and engineering The building’s square base is covered in angled pieces of glass The structure 7
