Chicago’s 110 story, 1,450 foot Willis Tower dwarfs other building in the city. The Tower is in contention with the 104-story, 1,776-foot One World Trade Center, a skyscraper built at the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, as the tallest building in America. A committee of architects recognized as the arbiters on world building heights met Friday in Chicago to decide whether a design change affecting One World Trade Center’s needle disqualifies its hundreds of feet from being counted, which would deny the building the title of nation’s tallest giving the title to Willis Tower.CHICAGO – Rising from the ashes of 9/11, the new World Trade Center tower has punched above the New York skyline to reach its powerfully symbolic height of 1,776 feet and become the tallest building in the country. Or has it?
A committee of architects recognized as the arbiters on world building heights was meeting Friday to decide whether a design change affecting the skyscraper’s 408-foot needle disqualifies it from being counted. Disqualification would deny the tower the title as the nation’s tallest.
But there’s more than bragging rights at stake; 1 World Trade Center stands as a monument to those killed in the terrorist attacks, and the ruling could dim the echo of America’s founding year in the structure’s height. Without the needle, the building measures 1,368 feet, a number that also holds symbolic weight as the height of the original World Trade Center.
What’s more, the decision is being made by an organization based in Chicago, whose cultural and architectural history is embodied by the Willis — formerly Sears — Tower that would be knocked into second place by a vote in favor of the New York structure.
“Most of the time these decisions are not so controversial,” said Daniel Safarik, an architect and spokesman for the nonprofit Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The 30 members of its Height Committee are meeting to render a judgment behind closed doors in Chicago, where the world’s first skyscraper appeared in 1884.