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The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

rarehistoricalphotos.com

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Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#11

Post by jgalt212 »

squeedles wrote: post #8
fidotron wrote: post #5

Tangentially: > The vision was meant to use the trade facility and urban renewal as tools to clear and revitalize what had become a “commercial slum”. What this refers to is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row#New_York_City Basically you cannot have Akihabara or Shenzhen style electronics markets because the sort of people that built the WTC don't like their chaotic appearance.

Thanks for that. We seem to have lost sight of the importance of "commercial biodiversity" in the past 40 or more years of continuous M&A concentration. Happily, I saw a little discussion of it in 2008 when the advocates of letting the auto companies fail were pushed back by statistics showing how many second and third tier suppliers would be destroyed. But the fourth tier, the shenzhen / radio alley-type stuff is st…

There's plenty of "commercial biodiversity" left on Canal Street. And it's pretty gross.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#14

Post by eigenhombre »

netesh wrote: post #12

People who like this might enjoy the amazing film Man On Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM

Highly recommended... I found it quite beautiful and moving, and it's the only film I've felt compelled to write a blog post[1] about. "Seeing the film (made just last year) transforms the memory of the Towers from one of trauma to something more like transcendence."

[1] https://johnj.com/posts/man-on-wire/ [2009]

Edit: add year

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#16

Post by fnord77 »

They were so stunning to look at from the outside. They were so large they didn't seem real.

I worked for a bit on the 95 or 96th floor. Inside they were less impressive. The lowish ceiling and skinny windows made it feel confining. To me, in the 90s, they felt old and dated on the inside.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#17

Post by whycome »

chistev wrote: post #3

Jules Naudet 3 hour footage of the collapse of the WTC, following the firemen before and after the towers got hit. https://youtu.be/CqzbHEfX3o8?si=4wfuiD94x9p11sj0

Did anyone film with film cameras that day? We could get really really high res footage out of that.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#18

Post by pcurve »

"Tragically, 60 people were killed during construction.

During their lifetimes the towers were host to the birth of 17 babies and 19 murders"

That is unusually high number of death during construction.

After 25 years, I still get emotional looking at these imageries. The emotion is raw. I'm still mad that this happened.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#19

Post by PopAlongKid »

For context, three of the tallest skyscrapers at the time were constructed in Chicago during roughly this same period.[0] (Originally known as the Hancock, Standard Oil, and Sears buildings, since renamed). Chicago was also the second largest U.S. city at the time, and I've often thought that the WTC construction was in part motivated by a sense of civic competition between the two cities.

"Of Chicago's five tallest buildings, three were completed within a 5-year span between 1969 and 1974."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_C...

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#20

Post by RajT88 »

jeswin wrote: post #6

The Twin Towers sort of represented the height of American power and prestige, and their fall kicked off the decline. From its peak in the unipolar 90s, a series of expensive misadventures that began after the towers fell diverted critical funds from development (against the backdrop of China's inevitable rise and industrial capacity), into conflict and war far away.

It is - seriously - no wonder they got destroyed. NYC is a symbol, and the towers were a recognizable icon in the skyline.

There's a high number of coincidences about the towers getting destroyed. It's no conspiracy, it's because the towers and NYC meant something in the eyes of the world with regards to the USA.

Just rattling off a few of the wild ones:

The episode of The Lone Gunmen which predicted an attack with a plane on the towers.

The Sega Master System game (I forget the name, but I own it) where it depicts a missile hitting the towers on the opening screen. It's pixels with little wings, and super spooky in retrospect.

The Dream Theater live album released on 9/11 which showed the NYC skyline burning.

There's so much stuff, I almost don't blame the conspiracy theorists. But they have the causality backwards. They also really like to ignore the fact that 8 years earlier somebody tried to blow up the towers and killed 6 people...

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