Watch and share this commemorative time-lapse movie, highlighting progress at the World Trade Center site from October 2004 to September 2013. Witness the rise of One World Trade Center, including the installation of the spire, bringing it to a staggering height of 1,776 feet. Hundreds of thousands of high definition images were captured over the past 9 years and hand-edited for this special time-lapse movie.

Following the destruction of the original World Trade Center, there was debate regarding the future of the World Trade Center site. There were proposals for its reconstruction almost immediately, and by 2002, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had organized a competition to determine how to use the site. The proposals were part of a larger plan to memorialize the September 11 attacks and rebuild the complex. When the public rejected the first round of designs, a second, more open competition took place in December 2002, in which a design by Daniel Libeskind was selected as the winner. This design went through many revisions, mainly because of disagreements with developer Larry Silverstein, who held the lease to the World Trade Center site at that time.

A final design for the “Freedom Tower” was formally unveiled on June 28, 2005. To address security issues raised by the New York City Police Department, a 187-foot (57 m) concrete base was added to the design in April of that year. The design originally included plans to clad the base in glass prisms in order to address criticism that the building might have looked uninviting and resembled a “concrete bunker”. However, the prisms were later found to be unworkable, as preliminary testing revealed that the prismatic glass easily shattered into large and dangerous shards. As a result, it was replaced by a simpler facade consisting of stainless steel panels and blast-resistant glass.

Contrasting with Libeskind’s original plan, the tower’s final design tapers octagonally as it rises. Its designers stated that the tower would be a “monolithic glass structure reflecting the sky and topped by a sculpted antenna.” In 2006, Larry Silverstein commented on a planned completion date: “By 2012 we should have a completely rebuilt World Trade Center, more magnificent, more spectacular than it ever was.” On April 26, 2006, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved a conceptual framework that allowed foundation construction to begin.

On November 12, 2013, the Height Committee of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) made the controversial announcement that One World Trade Center was the tallest building in the United States at 1,776 feet, declaring that the mast on top of the building is a spire since it is a permanent part of the building’s architecture. By the same reasoning, the building was also the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.

The building opened on November 3, 2014, and Condé Nast employees moved into spaces spread among 24 floors. Although Condé Nast occupies floors 20 to 44, its move to the new tower will not be complete until early 2015. It is expected that the company will attract new tenants to occupy the remaining 40% of unleased space in the tower, as Condé Nast had revitalized Times Square after moving there in 1999. Only about 170 of 3,400 total employees moved into the new tower on the first day.

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