Freedom Tower

About Freedom Tower

Artist's rendering of the Freedom Tower with Midtown Manhattan and the Empire State Building in the background.

1 World Trade Center, or the Freedom Tower, is the main building of the new World Trade Center complex currently under construction in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The tower will be located in the northwest corner of the 16-acre (65,000 m²) World Trade Center site, bound by Vesey, West, Washington and Fulton streets. Construction on below-ground utility relocations, footings, and foundations for the 1,776-foot (541 m) Freedom Tower began on April 27, 2006. On December 19, 2006, the first steel columns were installed in the building's foundation. Three other high-rise office buildings are planned for the site along Greenwich Street, and they will surround the World Trade Center Memorial, which is currently under construction. The area will also be home to a museum dedicated to the history of the site.

Following the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in the September 11, 2001 attacks, there was much debate regarding the future of the World Trade Center site. Proposals began almost immediately, and by 2002, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation organized a competition to determine how to use the land. Public rejection of the first round of designs, the "Preliminary Design Concepts," led to a second, more open competition in December 2002, the "Innovative Design Study," in which a design by Daniel Libeskind was selected. This design went through many revisions, largely because of disagreements with developer Larry Silverstein, who held the lease to the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001.