The History of the WTC:From the 1939 World's Fair to One World Trade Center

Long before the Twin Towers, the name “World Trade Center” appeared on a temporary building at the 1939 New York World's Fair, put up at the last minute for visiting dignitaries. It cast New York as a crossroads of global commerce.

Wealthy planners — chiefly the Rockefellers — first looked to Queens. With more family land in Manhattan, the City made more sense. But more than sixteen acres were needed in the middle of a built city, and no such site was open.

The plan required New Jersey's consent: the NY/NJ Port Authority would have to lead it. New Jersey refused. A World Trade Center in the Financial District offered New Jersey little, and without a bi-state deal the project stalled.

The Rockefellers then turned to Lower Manhattan's Radio Row, on the West Side near Hudson Terminal. It was a rough electronics district of the World War II era. Offers to buy in the 1940s and 1950s failed; owners would not sell. The Rockefellers turned to eminent domain. The rest of the site would come from the old docks, using new “baths” to carry the complex above the water line.

Early plans were not for the world's tallest buildings. Facing huge costs, the Port Authority pressed to build as high as possible. Minoru Yamasaki — deeply afraid of heights — fought every “extra” floor.

In 1962, lawmakers authorized the Port Authority to condemn the small shops that had stood there for generations. Merchants sued. In Courtesy Sandwich Shop, Inc. v. Port of New York Authority (1963), they argued that taking land for the World Trade Center was not a public use. New York's highest court upheld the taking; on November 12, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, 375 U.S. 78, clearing Radio Row for demolition under eminent domain.

Even after eminent domain prevailed, opponents kept fighting. Allies of the Empire State Building's owner warned of ruined TV signals, electrocution risks, and danger to aircraft. None of it was true — but politics, then as now, often ran on fear more than fact. Advertisers, meanwhile, put unfinished plans and models into their campaigns. Some fears had a basis: bombings in New York dated back to the early 1900s, including on Wall Street.

Once it was clear the towers would be the world's tallest, Yamasaki turned to safety. He drew stairs to the top on all four edges of Towers 1 and 2, and invented a banked elevator system so that if one bank failed, people could still reach the ground. That design is now standard in skyscrapers and hotels; it began at the World Trade Center.

The Twin Towers opened in the early 1970s among the tallest buildings on earth.

For a generation they were everyday New York — offices, Windows on the World, the mall, PATH, and the plaza — and a familiar emblem in film and photography.

The 1993 garage bombing showed how vulnerable the towers were. Many believe a height limit at the Marriott World Trade Center parking entrance kept the bomb van from going deeper, so it exploded at the garage mouth and did less damage than a blast farther inside might have.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers seized four commercial airliners.

• 8:46 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower (1 WTC).
• 9:03 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower (2 WTC) as the world watched live.
• 9:37 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
• 9:59 a.m. The South Tower collapsed after burning for 56 minutes.
• 10:03 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back.
• 10:28 a.m. The North Tower fell, 102 minutes after it was struck.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. A nation was left to ask what should rise from Ground Zero — and how to remember.

Recovery crews cleared the site while families and the nation mourned. Rebuilding took years of argument and work. In February 2003, Daniel Libeskind's “Memory Foundations” plan was selected — keeping the tower footprints sacred.

In March 2003, the United States led a coalition invasion of Iraq. The war became one of the defining consequences of September 11 — debated for years as Americans weighed security, cost, and the meaning of justice after the attacks.

The Freedom Tower, reshaped by David Childs of SOM and later renamed One World Trade Center, took form in the mid-2000s.

Nearly a decade after September 11, U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden during a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. For many families and first responders, the news marked a long-sought reckoning with the man who ordered the attacks.

The National September 11 Memorial opened on the tenth anniversary in 2011. One World Trade Center was finished in 2014 at 1,776 feet, with the Museum and the Oculus rising beside it.

That full arc — from 1939 to today — is what we preserve and teach.