Everyone has been eagerly awaiting the topping out of 1 World Trade Center. While that milestone is still a few weeks or months away, as early as next week, the SOM-designed, Port Authority-built tower will surpass the Empire State Building as the tallest in the city.

In honor of that occasion, Earthcam, which has been monitoring the site with great fervor, put together a timelapse of the tower’s rise. It is an amazing site to behold, if also a troubling one—how did it take eight years for a tower, even one of this magnitude, to rise? (Well, we sort of know why. Still, it took half as long for the twice-as-tall Burj Khalifa, though that is also another story of immigrant labor and infinite money.)

Cynicism aside, it is is an impressive feat, especially considering we were only halfway here a year-and-a-half ago.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC