World Trade Center to become New York’s tallest building

NEW YORK – Construction workers are scheduled to install a steel column on top of the exoskeleton of 1 World Trade Center on Monday that will make the skyscraper the tallest building in New York City, the New York Times reported.

The columns will raise the tower higher than 1,250 feet, making it taller than the Empire State Building, the Associated Press reported.

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When the building is completed next year, it will have an 408-foot antenna that will increase the building’s height to 1,776 feet, making it taller than the first 1 World Trade Center, which collapsed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the New York Times reported. (Yes, the 1,776 feet is intentionally symbolic, according to the AP.) The roof of the new World Trade Center will match the height of the original 1 World Trade Center: 1,368 feet.

Counting the antenna, the World Trade Center, also known as the “Freedom Tower,” will be the tallest building in the US, the AP reported. For skyscraper enthusiasts who argue antennas shouldn’t count when measuring tall buildings, Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly called the Sears Tower) will remain the tallest, at 1,451 feet, not including antennas.

The tallest manmade structure in the Western Hemisphere is the 2,063-foot-tall KVLY-TV antenna in Blanchard, N.D., the AP reported.

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While the construction milestone is impressive for the World Trade Center, it’s not necessarily a happy occasion, Neal Bascomb, author of “Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City,” told the New York Times.

“This is not really a victory of any sort or even necessarily something to be celebrated,” he said. “It’s kind of like competing against a ghost.”