WTC History

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
(WTC) complex consisted of seven buildings, spanning 16 acres. The complex housed office space, an observation deck, the “Windows on the World” restaurant, and an underground shopping mall, and served as a transit hub for New Jersey PATH train and New York City subway riders. Approximately 50,000 people worked at the WTC, with another 40,000 passing through daily. 

Two 1993 Survivors Share Stories from the First Attack on the WTC

At a quarter past noon on a snowy Friday, February 26, 1993, Linda Horan and her colleagues at Fiduciary Trust had just placed an order for a lunch delivery when a loud explosion resounded through the building, causing it to violently shudder. Suddenly Linda noticed thick black smoke swelling upward outside of her 94th floor window. Although thousands inside the Towers were unaware of what transpired, a truck bomb had just detonated in the parking garage below the World Trade Center. The explosion resulted in an immediate power outage that caused the complex to rapidly grow cold within and the stairwells to go dark.

Hundreds were trapped in the elevators, including Carl Selinger, Transportation Planner for the Port Authority. Carl had just grabbed a salad-to-go from the cafeteria on the 43rd floor before boarding an empty sky lobby elevator to return to his office on the 65th floor. Barely a minute into the ride, he felt the elevator quiver and then slow to a stop somewhere between the 44th and 61st floors. He sat down to wait and started to eat his lunch, assuming power would resume shortly. It wasn’t long before he smelled and saw faint traces of smoke beginning to fill the elevator, while overhearing the sounds of people trapped in nearby elevator cabs. He started to panic. Carl covered his mouth and nose with a white handkerchief, which quickly blackened with soot, and began to write a final letter to his wife and children.

 
Soot-stained handkerchief used by Carl Selinger on 2/26/93 while trapped inside an elevator in the World Trade Center’s North Tower . Gift of Carl Selinger.

 
Final letter penned by Carl Selinger to his wife and children on 2/26/93 while trapped inside an elevator in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Gift of Carl Selinger.

Meanwhile, on the 94th floor, Linda Horan had received the announcement to begin an orderly evacuation of the building in groups of 10. By that time, smoke had risen to her floor’s corridor. A colleague handed Linda a red, Port Authority-issued fire warden’s flashlight. She heavily relied on the flashlight during her two-hour descent down the dark stairwells. After emerging onto the plaza at around 5:30pm, she connected with her mother who informed her that she had just survived a terrorist attack. 

As Linda was taking her first breath of fresh air outside, Carl Selinger was being rescued by Port Authority employees and fire marshals, who managed to hoist his stalled elevator car up to the agency’s headquarters on the 67th floor. He had been trapped for five hours, alone, and in complete darkness. While trapped, he pondered the possibility that New York City had fallen victim to a nuclear attack, particularly when the sounds of people evacuating tapered off to an ominous silence.

After the 1993 bombing, Linda kept her fire warden’s flashlight as a reminder of her ordeal. When Fiduciary moved its employees back into the World Trade Center that spring, the flashlight accompanied her. On the morning of September 11, 2001, it was one of the few items she made a point of grabbing before embarking on another arduous but successful descent from the building. Earlier this year, she donated the flashlight, among other items tied to her two survivor experiences in the Trade Center, to the Museum’s permanent collection. Carl Selinger also recently gave his smoke-stained handkerchief, as well as with the handwritten “final” note he wrote to his loved ones, to the 9/11 Memorial Museum and recorded an oral history recounting his experience on February 26, 1993. 

WTC Fire Safety Flashlight used by Linda Horan during her evacuation from the 94th Floor of the South Tower; 2/26/93 and 9/11/01. Gift of Linda Horan.

NYC Tourist Donates South Tower Observation Deck Ticket

On September 6, 2001, Evan Kuz flew from his home in Winnipeg, Canada to New York City for a 10-day visit.  An architecture enthusiast, he was immediately drawn to Manhattan’s landmark buildings, especially to the World Trade Center, where his sightseeing expeditions typically began and ended before he returned to stay with friends near Summit, New Jersey.

On the evening of September 10, Kuz struck up a conversation with a young tourist from abroad named Kamilla while catching the last boat back to Manhattan from Ellis Island. Hitting it off, the two out-of-towners decided to proceed together to “the Top of World”, enjoying the views from the Observation Deck of the WTC’s South Tower despite the inclement weather. They agreed to revisit the WTC the following morning, at 8:45 a m, so that they might ascend to the Observation Deck again when the attraction opened, should the weather improve, which it did.

Prior to leaving for lower Manhattan to meet Kamilla, Kuz took advantage of the crisp new morning by going for a run. Upon returning, he learned the news of the attacks on the World Trade Center and frantically attempted to call Kamilla but couldn’t get through. She’d written her cell phone number on the reverse of his Observation Deck ticket from the night before. More than 24 hours elapsed before he was finally able to reach her and verify her status. As it turned out, she too had been running late and had not yet boarded the subway downtown when the first plane hit the North Tower.  The two met up again on Thursday night in Times Square for an emotional reunion, which proved to be the last time they saw one another. Upon returning to Canada, Kuz retained this ticket as a link to that fateful day, a memory of Kamilla, and a reminder of what might have happened had the pair met at their proposed 8:45 a.m. meeting time.

The Observation Deck ticket bears the stamps indicative of the date and time that Evan Kuz visited the South Tower observatory: “09/10/01 18:15.” The pictograph on the ticket’s front was Kamilla’s, who had been trying to explain a certain kind of seafood that eluded her English vocabulary. On the reverse, Kamilla had jotted down her mobile phone number, Kuz’s only link to ascertaining her safety in the bewildering and frightening hours that followed the terrorist attacks.

Arturo Ressi

Arturo Ressi worked as a field engineer during the original construction of the slurry wall for the World Trade Center (constructed to prevent Hudson River water from leaking into the basement of the Twin Towers), involved from the very first excavation of the site through the initial commercial occupation of the buildings.  After 9/11, he was called back to the site to help protect the area against flooding.  Because of the WTC site’s close proximity to the Hudson River and unique shape and composition of the Manhattan Schist at bedrock, the building of the Towers’ foundation was especially challenging, and the slurry wall was constructed to ensure stability.  Upon returning to the site a week after 9/11, Ressi remembers a feeling of devastation at what remained, but recalls thinking that if the slurry wall had broken, the entire subway system of New York would have been flooded and the loss of life would have been exponentially worse. Listen >>

Photo William Borland. August 1968. Looking West at original slurry wall and Hudson River

Manhattan Schist

Capable of supporting the immense weight of the Twin Towers, this distinctive foundational bedrock was exposed anew after 9/11.  The 450 million year old piece of schist (the second oldest of New York City’s bedrocks) was excavated in August 2008 as crews dug the foundations of the Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site.  Manhattan schist, flecked with sparkling white mica, provides such a strong foundation that it makes the soaring skyline of New York City possible.

Original World Trade Center Architectural Presentation Model

The presentation model, created by the architectural firm Minoru Yamasaki Associates (MYA), and donated by The American Architectural Foundation to the Memorial Museum, is the largest and most detailed of the original series of architectural presentation models created by MYA and still surviving today.

In the early 1960’s, the architectural firm MYA was awarded the World Trade Center project.  As the architect, MYA built a number of presentation models for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to demonstrate how the proposed World Trade Center site would look upon completion of the first six buildings, including this large-scale model built from 1969-1971.

Minoru Yamasaki directed his model fabrication department to create over 108 models for the World Trade Center project, only three of which were large-scale models.  The events of September 11, 2001 destroyed the World Trade Center Archives and one of the remaining models on view in the lobby on the 88th floor of the North Tower.

Located near Detroit, Michigan, MYA tapped the talents of precision mold makers working in the automotive industry to help fabricate the presentation model’s plastic components.  The model which will be displayed in the Memorial Museum includes replicas of 300 cars and 170 people.  At the time it was created, the three-dimensionality of the individual pieces and the model’s realism was unprecedented for architectural models of the period.   Built at a scale of 1:200 and measuring eight by ten feet at the base, with the Twin Towers rising over seven feet high, the model vividly demonstrates the sheer size and mass of the original World Trade Center site.

The model has undergone meticulous conservation.  In 1993, The American Architectural Foundation acquired the model and, in 2003, received a grant from the Save America’s Treasures program to fund its preservation.  Deterioration of materials used for the model’s construction required intensive conservation work to stabilize the piece.  Replacement pieces were located, hand painted, and carefully matched to the original remaining pieces using photographs and existing loss areas to determine the original placement.

In the wake of 9/11, the model was exhibited twice in New York City.  In its pre-conservation condition, the model was shown in the exhibit, "WTC: MONUMENT” organized by the Skyscraper Museum at the New-York Historical Society, and then later included as the center-piece, post-conservation, at another World Trade Center exhibition at the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City.

Guy Tozzoli
Guy Tozzoli, a career Port Authority employee, was responsible for planning, design, construction, leasing, and the ultimate start-up operation of the World Trade Center. Listen to his account of the rise and fall of one of the greatest construction efforts ever undertaken. Listen >>

Original ticket marking the opening of the World Trade Center observation deck, collection of Guy Tozzoli.

Charles Maikish
Beginning as a college engineering student, Charles Maikish spent nearly his entire career at the World Trade Center, with diverse responsibilities for managing the building. In honor of the 15th anniversary of the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Maikish shared his memories of the bombing and the memorial created in honor of the people killed. Listen >>

Mike Hurley
Director of the Fire Safety at the World Trade Center on September 11, veteran Port Authority employee Michael Hurley was supervisor of the South Tower’s 107th floor observation deck on February 26, 1993, when terrorists detonated a bomb in the Trade Center’s underground parking garage. Listen >>