Title: Lower Manhattan 1976
Subtitle: July 26, 1976
Text: In the 1960s and the 70s, the downtown skyline changed dramatically as some thirty million square feet of new office space was added to the financial district. Unlike the aging prewar stock, these new buildings offered air conditioning and larger, more open floors to organize workers and new technology. With simple facades of glass or prefab panels, these big, boxy giants overpowered the classic skyline of stone pyramids and slender spires. The 110-story Twin Towers, each containing four million square feet, made all other skyscrapers seem like toys.
This aerial photograph captures an extraordinary view up Broadway which, shadowed by its many tall buildings, appears as a straight black vertical line through the center of the picture. The city's oldest and longest thoroughfare, Broadway runs straight to Tenth Street, then cuts a diagonal through the west side of Manhattan and the Bronx on its way to Albany.
Text: The broad expanse of West Street around 1920 shows the piers of the working waterfront as a solid barrier between the city and the river. Ocean liners steam into port and the relatively few automobiles park mid-street where an elevated highway would within a decade be constructed to accommodate the explosion of traffic.
(Picture 4)
Subtitle: Stock Certificate, 1926
Text: The first plans for a World Trade Center that involved the Port Authority focused on the East River waterfront. In 1961, though, the site shifted to the west side when the project was linked to the takeover of the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, which the Port Authority agreed to operate as the PATH system. As the stock certificate illustrates, tunnels carried commuters under the Hudson River to the Hudson Terminal buildings.
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