“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
I will give you the sounds– from them you will
have a thousand pictures.

“In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Auster added his distinct and original voice to NPR’s Peabody Award-winning Sonic Memorial Project, a nationwide collaboration that came together to chronicle and commemorate the life and history of the World Trade Towers. Now, from the vantage point of Ground Zero, Paul Auster leads us through streets and time on this Sonic Memorial soundtrack.”

“Featuring voice messages, interviews, eyewitness accounts, live music, audio artifacts–the elevators, revolving doors, the piano in Windows on the World…stories and sounds from the world Trade Center and it’s neighborhood.”

Facts

1.The WTC opened in 1970 after 8 years of construction.

2.The WTC was the dream of David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York.

3.The Rockefellers wanted to name the towers after themselves, but the mayor of NY, John Lindsay, insisted on the World Trade Center.

4.The City chose to build the WTC instead of building a new tunnel and large bridge over the Hudson River.

5.The World Trade Center was designed by architect Minoura Yamasaki.

6.According to Yamasaki, downtown Manhattan was the perfect place to erect the towers because there wasn’t “a single building worth saving in the neighborhood.”

7.Owners of nearby buildings disagreed, and delayed demolition by three weeks with their protests.

8.Sixteen blocks were cleared to house the completed WTC.

9.More than 10,000 workers involved in building the complex.

10.More than 60 of them died during construction.

11.The excavation work displaced enough soil to create Liberty Park, where four 60-floor towers and four apartment buildings were constructed.

12.The WTC’s foundations were laid at 60 feet below ground level.

13.The complex covered 16 acres when finished.

14.In addition to the towers, five other office buildings made up the WTC complex The WTC had 12 million square feet of space.

15.Each floor was 50,000 square feet.

16.The buildings had their own ZIP codes – 10047 and 10048.

17.The towers were designed to look like a futuristic sculpture.

18.The structure was revolutionary. Its main supports were external, lining the four corners of each tower.

19.Critics condemned the completed buildings as “boring.”

20.Completed, the buildings were 100 feet taller then the Empire State building.

21.Until the construction of Chicago’s Sears Tower and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the twin towers were the world’s tallest buildings.

22.The North Tower’s 347 foot radio tower technically allowed the WTC to still call itself the world’s tallest building.

23.The towers were different heights. The South tower was 1,362 feet tall, and big brother North tower was 1,368.

24.Sixty-eight miles of steel were used in the construction of the buildings.

25.The concrete poured was enough to build a road from New York to Washington, DC

26.The steel inside the WTC could have made three more Brooklyn Bridges.

27.The Twin Towers had more than 16 miles of staircases.

28.There were 43,600 windows.

29.The windows were small to reduce the of heat or cold entering the building. Regular size windows would have made the heat unbearable in the summertime.

30.The WTC’s 600,000 square feet of glass was cleaned by an automatic machine.

31.The building had 20,000 elevator doors.

32.Of the WTC’s 239 banks of elevators, one was known as the fastest in the U.S.

33.The main elevators at 27 feet a second reached the top in less than a minute.

34.There were 828 emergency exit doors.

35.23,000 fluorescent light bulbs lit the interior.

36.Originally, there were no light switches in the towers, because energy prices were one-third less than they are today. In 1982,switches were installed.

37.12,000 miles of electrical cable snaked through the building, supplying power to 15 trading floors for stockbrokers.

38.The 75,000 telephones were maintained by 19,600 miles of cable.

39.There were more than 300 computer mainframes on site.

40.The WTC used more power in one day than most small American cities.

41.Steam supplied by a plant on New York’s East River was used to heat the buildings.

42.The buildings housed 49,000 tons of air-conditioning equipment.

43.More than 250,000 cans of paint were needed every year for upkeep of the Towers.

44.The surrounding shopping center complex included 3250,000 square feet of restaurants and stores.

45.Six banks, five investment firms and three insurance companies called their headquarters there, in the building.

46.The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had its headquarters in the building.

47.American Express had three floors in the WTC.

48.The WTC was home base for Bank of America.

49.The trade center housed two top restaurants – the Windows on the World and Wild Blue.

50.Windows on the World had one of the best vintage wine collections in the United States.

51.More than 50,000 people worked in the twin towers.

52.By 9 a.m. each weekday morning, the buildings had an average of 35,000 employees at their desks.

53.More than 200,000 people – half of them tourists – moved through the buildings each day.

54.The South Tower had an observation deck that was visited by more than 26,000 people a day.

55.An information sign at the top assured visitors that the buildings had been designed to withstand airplane crashes.

56.The towers could be seen from at least 20 miles away.

57.On a clear day, it was possible to see for 45 miles in every direction from the observation deck.

58.The express elevator to the observation deck was the largest in the U.S. with a 55-person capacity.

59.Every president since 1973 paid a visit to the landmark.

60.President Ronald Reagan watched July 4th fireworks celebrations from the WTC on two occasions.

61.Superstars Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Liza Minelli all sang in WTC restaurants.

62.Two New York TV stations incorporated the twin tower image into their logos.

63.The towers served 10 New York TV stations with 10 antennas on the top.

64.More postcards of the WTC were sent each year than any other building in the world.

65.In 1974, a Frenchman, Phillipe Petit, strung a tightrope between the two towers and walked across.

66.Three men successfully parachuted from the top of the towers.

67.More than a dozen mountain climbers have scaled the building.

68.In 1975 a jobless construction worker parachuted from the South Tower to publicize the plight of the unemployed.

69.The most famous man to climb the building was George Willig – who was arrested at the top. Willig was fined one penny for each of the 110 floors he scaled.

70.Last year, a man in a micro-light aircraft crashed into the North Tower.

71.In the concourse beneath the towers, there were more than 75 stores.

72.Each day, over 150,000 commuters passed through the three subway stations there.

73.Eighty-seven tons of food was delivered to the building each day.

74.Over 30,000 cups of coffee were poured daily in the basement cafes.

75.Twenty-two doctors had practices there.

76.Seventeen babies were born on the site.

77.Irv Silverstein recently bought the WTC for almost $3.2 billion.

78.The WTC generated $110 million a year in profit.

79.More than three dozen movies have been filmed there.

80.The best known film to use the WTC as a location was the 1976 remake of King Kong.

81.The 1993 bombing of the WTC killed six people and injured 1,000 more. 1,300 pounds of explosives ripped through the garage in the 1993 attack.

82.That bomb created a crater 16 feet deep and badly damaged inner support beams.

83.Before the 1993 attack, there were three closed circuit television networks for security.

84.After the bombing, the cameras were increased to 300 monitored by computers.

85.More than 300 security guards worked there.

86.The WTC featured security centers on 14 different floors and its own police station.

87.The entrance lobbies had 16 concierge desks and 12 X-ray machines.

88.After the first bombing, no one could get inside the buildings without an ID check.

89.It took an average of five minutes for a visitor to pass through security checks.

90.Before the 1993 bombing, there were more than 1,000 parking spaces beneath the buildings; 600 remained afterward.

91.All vehicles using the parking lot had to show FBI security passes.

92.On Sept. 11, the building was 95 percent full, with over 400 tenants.

93.New York Gov. George Pataki had an office in the WTC, but wasn’t there when the disaster struck.

94.Both the Secret Service and the FBI rented office space there.

95.$110.3 million in gold and 120.7 million in silver is buried in the rubble.

96.The combined weight of the towers was more than 1.5 million tons. 1Each tower was built to safely sway about three feet during strong wind storms.

97.Blue Cross-Blue Shield, New York’s largest health insurance company, moved into the building 3 years ago.

98.Nine chapels serving six different faiths called the WTC home.

99.Twenty-nine countries had trade mission offices in the buildings.

100. Every major U.S. airline had ticket offices inside the WTC.

101. The Towers were the first skyscrapers in the world destroyed by terrorists.

102. NYC had disrupted television transmission for months after the attack.

 On to Part 3 >>

• Laurita
• Offline IM

This is a magnificent blog ! Words cannot describe how great this is ! wonderful job,sis! I really commend you for all the hard work you must have put into this. How long did it take you ? It’s absolutely wonderful. I’m so moved. It really hits the spot. I’m speechless.

Monday September 10, 2007 – 01:46pm (EDT) Remove Comment

• Sans …
• Offline

Thanks so much, sis!

Monday September 10, 2007 – 02:00pm (EDT) Remove Comment

• Papa
• Offline IM

Fascinating audiotrak along with the details and history of 9/11 brings the event closer to reality using a multimedia approach not seen by me before on a blog..your whole approach is very imaginative and characteristic of your work.~~Papa

Monday September 10, 2007 – 07:52pm (PDT) Remove Comment

• Sweet…
• Offline

WOW! I have been lingering here enthralled as you provide us such details of the WTC. Thank you for being the most wonderful NYC hostess on this occasion. I have watched this tragedy from afar via the media..can only imagine how this must have felt being played out in your own backyard. Thank you for opening your door and letting us in!

Tuesday September 11, 2007 – 12:14am (EDT) Remove Comment

• Kerry
• Offline

amazing. thank you for posting this.

Tuesday September 11, 2007 – 09:50am (EDT) Remove Comment

• Faye(…
• Offline

I came here to your page thru your friend…as she left me a poem and i saw YOU. Who is this lady ? Here i am listening to the audiotrack. Thanks for posting it. Also, i hope you don’t mind, but i’m going to post the facts for all who come to my page to read. Thanks for the info. There’s so much here i wasn’t aware of. It hits home more than we realize sometimes.
BIG *HUGS* thank you…

Tuesday September 11, 2007 – 10:20am (CDT) Remove Comment

• Lady …
• Offline IM

TERRIFIC POST! Thanks for the facts, too!! 🙂

Tuesday September 11, 2007 – 02:17pm (EDT) Remove Comment

• Frida…
• Offline

Fascinating.

Tuesday September 11, 2007 – 02:13pm (CDT) Remove Comment

• Trees…
• Offline

Well I’ve been totally absorbed and involved by this sound walk.. I now want to come across to NYC and actually visit this area..something i’ve never wanted to do before… and have this recording.. real ‘living’ history.. so poigniant, so moving, so revealing with me. Those messages left by victims in the towers and the so so moving one on the man in on the hijacked aircraft… I cant imagine what it would have been like to have been on the recieving end of them… how brave to share these .. The thing that brought tears to my eyes was the poem on track 10… and that last line… about taking life for granted (sorry cant remember the real words).. punched right in the heart,
I must be one of a few people here who never saw the WTC… but I will always remember the day it happened.. I was driving on a motorway and it was broadcast constantly across the radio…. may they rest in peace… and treasure the freedom we have….

reply bostonsdandd wrote on Sep 9, ’08 You know I’ve never been to NYC. All I know about the Twin Towers is what I watched on TV that day and in the following days. I’ve never known the dynamics of the buildings. I knew they were huge, but not like this. Makes it seem even more unreal. Thanks for collecting this information and sharing it with us. It puts a whole new light on the pictures in our heads.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 9, ’08 bostonsdandd said You know I’ve never been to NYC. All I know about the Twin Towers is what I watched on TV that day and in the following days. I’ve never known the dynamics of the buildings. I knew they were huge, but not like this. Makes it seem even more unreal. Thanks for collecting this information and sharing it with us. It puts a whole new light on the pictures in our heads. I am so glad you found them of value, Lori. I don’t think anyone can really imagine their magnitude.

reply starfishred wrote on Sep 9, ’08 Wonderful set of info’s sue

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Sep 9, ’08 Great presentation. I feel like I’m there.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 9, ’08 Thanks, Heidi, I am so glad people appreciate it.

reply tonij16102 wrote on Sep 9, ’08 Truly a tragedy for mankind that will never heal or be forgotten

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 9, ’08, edited on Sep 9, ’08 tonij16102 said Truly a tragedy for mankind that will never heal or be forgotten Thanks so much for coming, Toni.

Comment deleted at the request of the author.

reply kittigory wrote on Sep 10, ’08 I’m finding this such a bittersweet memorial! My heart aches…

reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Sep 10, ’08 Sue: This is wonderful audio that brings us into the streets and the very rich history of your city. Thank you for sharing this with us all~the memories,the pain of NYC and of all America . This is very powerful!

reply jadedruid wrote on Sep 10, ’08 This is hard to listen to. I have not been able to visit ground zero since it was cleared. I know it had to be cleaned and sanitized but clearing it felt like disturbing a grave.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 10, ’08 jadedruid said This is hard to listen to. I have not been able to visit ground zero since it was cleared. I know it had to be cleaned and sanitized but clearing it felt like disturbing a grave. And that’s the big issue of the loved ones of those who were killed–they want it to remain sacred ground but there are all kinds of plans for it, and dig they must!

reply zafreud wrote on Sep 11, ’08 Oh my! Sometimes the sounds are harder than images…I mean that I could handle the visual information of your memorial tour, but this…this is so imposing and heartbreaking, that I’ll finish it “in doses”. I just cannot hear them all to the end at once! It was a massive loss! And this project reminds it so vividly!….

reply agnes128 wrote on Sep 11, ’08 I’m feeling worse than cold. It’s heartbreaking.

reply tulipsinspring wrote on Sep 11, ’08 Wow this is fascinating Sue … I didn’t hear it all yet, but I’ll be back. This tribute is amazing, amazing!

reply sanddunz wrote on Sep 13, ’08 This is good Sue. I still cry to this day

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 8, ’09 2009 Comments

reply sylvie1 wrote on Sep 9, ’09 I can’t think of something to say that covers what I have read and learned here. I am of a different mindset, probably because I’m from a smaller, quieter place. To me, building such a tall building is not wise, because things happen, and if we can’t get to people in need, we know they will die. Of course no one would have expected something like this, and this is a terrible lesson to be learned. At least I hope poeople will learn from this ghorrendous act. In the world we now live in we need to learn to be ready for anything unexpected. Building more death traps just isn’t a good idea.

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Sep 11, ’09 Excellent post! Thanks for all your hard work. Very moving.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 9, ’10, edited on Sep 9, ’10 2010 comments

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Sep 10, ’10 Wonderful post! You did a great job on this.

reply skeezicks1957 wrote on Sep 11, ’10 How wonderful that the sounds were gathered together for all of us to be able to take time on this 9/11/2010 and remember. Thank you for this extremely well presented tribute.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Sep 12, ’10 Mary Ellen, I am very glad you caught this one, I think the tour is remarkable; glad to share it with you.