The Times (Are A-Changin')

Through the din of construction at the World Trade Center–where the pile driver competes with the jack hammer-the attentive ear can pick up a babel of tongues from the earth’s far corners.

These are the voices of the growing army of tenants, eventually to number 50,000. So far they total 1,800, representing 111 companies, trade agencies and governments.

They hurry along temporary enclosed walkways across the raucous, muddy construction site to the 16 floors of offices already open in the sleek, aluminum-coated 110-story north tower. In addition, 40 students from 26 “developing” countries are attending the new World Trade Institute on the 13th floor.

The 110‐story World Trade Center was “topped out” yes terday with the emplacement of a steel column 1,370 feet above the streets of Lower Manhattan.

A spokesman for the Port of New York Authority, which is directing construction of the building, said the 36‐foot long, four‐ton column was the first piece of steel to reach the highest point of the building.

The column, with an American flag attached—a tradi tion in “topping out”—was hoisted in place atop the North Tower Building at 11:30 A.M. The Trade Center became the world’s tallest building last Oct. 19 when its structure rose higher than the Empire State Building, which is 1,250 feet high, not includ ing the television mast which is 222 feet high.

At 2:51 yesterday, after noon, the Empire State Building became the second tallest skyscraper in the world.

Two and three‐quarters miles downtown a four‐ton piece of steer framework of the north tower of the World Trade Center was fitted into place, extending the frame work past the 102nd‐story level to a height 1,254 feet above street level—four feet higher than the Empire State Building. The trade center will eventually be 110 stories high.

Forty years ago, almost to the week, the Empire State edged past the Chrysler Building to become the world’s tallest.

Work has begun in Chicago on a building that will be taller than the trade center.

A gang of sweating; straining workmen guided a 34-ton hunk of steel gently and precisely onto a concrete slab in Lower Manhattan yesterday, beginning a work that will eventually take them onto narrow girders 1,350 feet in the air as they erect the world’s tallest buildings–the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

It is the ongoing. process of the men who “set. steel,” who walk the girders to push new girders into the air so that those who follow can, fill the space with the amenities that make office buildings and apartment houses.

To work in the vanguard of the hundreds of men who build a skyscraper takes strong arms, quick coordination and a good deal of nerve.

The Port of New York Authority awarded the first contracts yesterday for the super structure of the World Trade Center, whose twin, 110-story towers will be the tallest buildings in the world.

Fifty-thousand tons of steel for structural bearing walls was purchased from the Pacific Car and Foundry Company of Seattle. Three contracts for other forms of steel went to the Laclede Steel Company of St. Louis, the Granite City Steel Company of Granite City, Ill., and the Karl Koch Erecting Company of the Bronx.

Karl Koch also received the contract for erecting all the steel in the towers. The sixth contract, for aluminum exterior wall, went to the Aluminum Company of America of Pittsburgh.

The Port of New York Authority prepared yesterday to start its first demolition on land acquired for the proposed $350 million World Trade Center.

Workmen fenced off a one story building at Cortlandt and West Streets, which will be razed to make way for tests of foundation systems planned to support the 110-story twin towers and plaza buildings of
the giant complex, The towers will be the tallest buildings in the world.

The workmen will remove fixtures from the building next and then wrecking of the structure will be started.

Twin 1,350-foot towers, the world’s tallest buildings, will be erected to house the World Trade Center planned downtown. The towers and a cluster of 70-foot-high satellite buildings will form a ring around a five-acre plaza containing reflecting pools.

Plans for the $350 million complex on the Lower West Side were disclosed yesterday at a preview in the New York Hilton Hotel.

The center will gather governmental and private activities in the export-import field now widely scattered in the metropolitan area. It will haveexhibition halls, shops, restaurants and a 250-room hotel, for travelers whose business brings them to the center.

Each of the center’s twin towers will be eight stories and 100 feet-taller than the Empire State Building. Without its 222-foot television antenna mast, the Empire State is 1,250 feet high and has 102 stories.

Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the highly acclaimed United States Science Pavilion at the Seattle World’s Fair, has been named architect for the proposed World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

Emery Roth & Sons of 850 Third Avenue will be associated architects on the project. Announcement of their selection was made yesterday by S. Sloan Colt, chairman of the Port of New York Authority.

The $270,000,000 center is being planned by the Port Authority on a 15-acre site bounded by West, Barclay, Church and Liberty Streets.

The Port Authority has said that the center would bring together in one location all the specialized activities and information needed for the conduct of export-import business in the city. No date has been set for completion of the center.

A World Trade Center in lower Manhattan costing at least $355,000,000 was recommended yesterday by the Port of New York Authority after a year-long study. The center would include a complex of buildings to be built on a sixteen-acre site bounded by Old Slip, Fulton, Pearl and Water Streets and the East River.

The recommendation was made in a report to Governor Rockefeller, Gov. Robert B. Meyner of New Jersey and Mayor Wagner. It noted that the proposed center, “adjacent to the traditional core of world trade activity in lower Manhattan,” would be serviced by subway, railroad, ferry and bus lines.