The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
WORLD TRADE CENTER
September 11, 2001 was not the first attack on the World Trade Center. Near noon on Friday, February 26, 1993, an explosion in a public parking garage beneath the North Tower tore through concrete and rebar, opening a crater five stories deep. The blast knocked out power to the complex and filled the towers with smoke and debris. Six people died and thousands were trapped on the upper floors, forced to evacuate in dark, suffocating stairwells.
The Saturday newspapers headlines reported: BLAST HITS TRADE CENTER, BOMB SUSPECTED. The source of the blast proved to be a van filled with homemade explosives. Investigators determined that terrorists associated with a radical Islamic cell were responsible. Six of the seven conspirators were arrested and convicted: the leader, Ramzi Yousef, was the apprehended in Pakistan in 1995, brought to the US, and convicted.
The cleanup and rebuilding of the World Trade Center cost $250 million and lasted about twenty months, although some tenants began returning to the South Tower in mid-March. The North Tower opened the following month. The Port Authority made improvements in security and emergency response systems and treated the reopening of the World Trade Center as a celebration.
Model of Lower Manhattan created by
Modelmaker, Michael G. Chesko.
This highly-detailed, hand-carved miniature wooden model of Downtown Manhattan was donated to the Skyscraper Museum by devoted amateur model maker and Arizona resident Mike Chesko. The 35 x 29” model presents the skyscrapers of Downtown in a 1:3200 scale; each inch of the model represents about 267 feet at full scale meaning the Twin Towers stand 5.1 inches tall. The model represents Lower Manhattan in 2000, before the Twin Towers were destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001.
Shown inside the case:
Newsweek, March 8, 1993.
TERROR HITS HOME: The Search for the Bombers
TIME, March 8, 1993.
TERROR HITS HOME: The Search for the Tower Bomber
Daily News, February 27, 1993.
NEW YORK’S DAY OF TERROR.
Collection of the Skyscraper Museum.
