Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 15:47:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #96:Reconstruction,Research,Broadcast... As noted,early list emails are at http://www.put.com/wtc/archive.html as part of our resource list and timeline at http://www.put.com/wtc . Among the links there is Reconstruction Report,which though it springs from the urban-planning-activist lobby does accept pro-rebuilding submissions and prints them on its site...a supply of well-written ones would be a good idea. In writing comments and position papers please be sure to do your research!...we need to be the ones who catch the other side getting facts wrong,not vice versa.Someone on the NYCS board (the backup sites continue to have some software trouble) was saying the Twins were each 1353 feet tall,in terms of submitting these dimensions to CNN...the North Tower was 1368 feet to the roof,the South Tower 1362 feet and some inches.I don't want a roofline shorter than 1368 feet for any reason. Also,Tal Barzilai gave a screwed up chronology saying the Singer Building was superseded as world's tallest by the Flatiron Building.I've been through this before,but... I've seen some differing sources on the world's-tallest title in the 1880s and 1890s.In the course of the 1880s,the world's tallest STRUCTURE title passed between Cologne Cathedral (513 feet,completed 1880),the Washington Monument(555 feet,1884), and the Eiffel Tower(985 feet,1889).In the 1880s and 1890s the first really tall BUILDINGS in the sense of floors all the way up were constructed,the Home Insurance and Masonic Temple buildings each holding the crown in Chicago I believe while others in New York vied for the crown. In 1890 the new World building was completed on Park Row in New York,then the seat of New York's then-many newspapers. Several buildings that were among the tallest were built there in this period...this one,around 300 feet tall,was apparently the world's tallest at that time,and replaced the one whose destruction by fire in the 1880s features incidentally in Jack Finney's novel TIME AND AGAIN.It was demolished in 1955 for a Brooklyn Bridge approach improvement. I am a little hazy(because of conflicting sources) over the titleholders from then until the St. Paul Building,also on Park Row and also now demolished,was completed in late 1898 or early 1899. The Park Row Building was completed in 1899,and surpassed the St. Paul Building by a wide margin,being about 390 feet tall to the tops of its twin domes.The Flatiron,or Fuller Building,was not completed until 1902,and is only about the same height as the St. Paul Building,thus was never the World's Tallest. With its dramatic narrow profile,the Flatiron may have LOOKED remarkably tall,compared to the Park Row Building's being about as wide as it is tall (scaled up to WTC height,it would take up more land than the whole WTC site).Both of these buildings still stand...among taller nearby neighbors. The Park Row Building remained world's tallest until the Singer Building was completed,at 608 feet tall,in 1908...surpassing the PRB by more than a 50% margin,something no World's Tallest Building has done to a predecessor since.The Singer Building was architecturally striking,but not very efficient in providing office space...the much shorter Hudson Terminal Buildings across Church Street were the world's LARGEST office buildings at that time(these twins,as noted, were torn down to build the WTC shortly before the Singer was torn down to build the US Steel Building,One Liberty Plaza,which has an office capacity greater than the Singer by a much larger margin than the difference in height). The Singer was the first building taller than Cologne Cathedral, though the Eiffel Tower would remain tallest structure until the Chrysler Building was completed....but its reign as world's tallest building ended the very next year,the Metropolitan Life tower being completed in 1909 and breaking the 700-foot barrier. The Woolworth Building went up in 1913 at 792 feet and stayed world's tallest until 1929,but the world's LARGEST title went to the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway,completed in 1916. (Silverstein Properties has offices there today). Another research flub was someone's statement at NYCS that the Chase Manhattan Bank relocated to Lower Manhattan in anticipation of the WTC...its 1960 tower represented STAYING IN lower Manhattan, the Chase National bank having been at 18 Pine and the Bank of the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street before their 1950s merger. 40 Wall of course oh-so-briefly displaced the Woolworth as world's tallest in 1929...the Chrysler Building took the crown in 1930, the Empire State (also world's largest) in 1931,and the 950-foot Cities Service Building(now American International) replaced 40 Wall(now called the Trump Building) as downtown's tallest in 1932. One Chase Manhattan Plaza was the first really tall building constructed downtown after the American International(also known for a while as 60 Wall though actually at 70 Pine Street...it had a bridge to the building at 60 Wall Street that was torn down for the 1989 J.P. Morgan building). Enough history lessons. Tonight's New York 1 "town meeting" at Battery Park City will be simulcast on C-SPAN 2 for those outside the New York area. I don't know how much coverage tonight's Queens site plan hearing will get. Weather forecasts are wet and bleak,which affects my plans to get into Manhattan for leaflet and petition work this weekend... I will be sure to put in at least one day,though. Petition wording has come up for discussion,some volunteers feeling that the WTCRM "soft" petition is too soft,though I think it is productive at the present stage of the planning process. What do you think should go into a "hard" petition? Don't forget to do site plan comments and send them! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.