I believe the PATH train station is directly below the WTC. Reports on the NY stations yesterday said that the station had pancaked and was only four feet floor to ceiling.

It was huge.


After the first attack in '93, I haerd it compared to many cities in the midwest.

During the day more than 200,000 people moved through the WTC. This makes it the second largest city in many states.

Imagine losing an entire city in one hour.

Go to google and search for "world trade center NYC"....you'll find all you need

a little about it: each floor of each tower had more than an acre of office space. the "small" buildings connected to it were in the 40-story range. one good way of getting a sense of it is to look at the pictures of the plane hitting the tower -- that plane is a jumbo jet! look how tiny it is!

there was a huge plaza connecting the buildings, and beneath it was what amounted to a huge shopping mall. it also included full train and subwat stations.

the world trade center was what amounted to a city, and not a small city, either.

part of the problem in understanding all of this is our total inability to imagine the scope of it -- it's just not in us. if there had been some huge fire in which 50 firemen were killed, it would dominate the news for days. if there were a shootout in which five policemen were killed, it would dominate the news for days. if there were a single plane crashed into the ground by terrorists, it would dominate the news for days. but this situation has totally overwhelmed our ability to comprehend. and to some extent, our ability to retaliate, for there is no retaliation that could possibly be enough.

dep

Each floor of the towers was about the size of your average large grocery store or K-Mart or a little over 7000 sq. ft. The pictures on the TV did no justice to the real size of the buildings. Think about this also, you see how much higher those 2 building were compaired to the roof levels around it, most of those buildings around it average around 35 stories themselves. The total area affected would be about the size of the average mid size American city's downtown.

The best thing I can tell you is that it employed 50,000 people. That is a small city, right there.

Sorry for being lazy.

http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm


Check out that link. Compare the WTC to cities you know with populations around 200,000. That is the kind of structure they took down in one hour.

Places like:

Greensboro, NC.
Montgomery, AL.
Scottsdale, AZ.
Richmond, VA .
Garland, TX.
Des Moines, IA.
Jackson, MS.

I've been to the WTC once... went to the roof of one of the towers and could see all of Manhattan. It's so big that I heard it has its own zip code.

I don't have know of a website offhand, but here's a way to comprehend it--chances are that your small town could fit easily into just one of the towers and hardly crowd anyone who was already there. They were THAT big.

I lived in a small city (70,000) before moving to New York; according to reports this week, 70,000 is the number of tourists that move through the place on a good day in high tourist season. There are separate elevators to the observatory, so the folks working in the building every day scarcely notice the tourists.

You'll notice that I keep forgetting to use past tense. It still hasn't really sunk in yet.

Anyway, what we HAD were two enormous towers, with vast lobby space on the ground floor, and a big hotel right between the two (it would have beeen a large building anywhere else in town), surrounding a huge concrete plaza with a fountain. There were about seven buildings total in the WTC complex, all very tall but dwarfed by those towers.

Underneath the towers and hotel is the Concourse, which was an actual mall; there were department store branches, boutiques, restaurants,, etc. Underneath the concourse are the subway tunnels, which require walking down at least one or two flights of stairs.

I have heard that the Cortland Street Station, which was the one I used on my very infrequent trips to that area, has been severely damaged. So I'm thinking that a lot of what used to be the Towers was "pushed" into the underground spaces when they fell. I would like to think that the rescue people have already thought of going at this mess from undergound, if possible. It may not be possible.

I worked in the Trade Center for several years at Cantor Fitzgerald. There are three train stations in the complex. One is the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) and then two subway stations. Each floor in the towers was nearly an acre in size. there were huge banks of elevators serving select floors. For many floors you had to disembark from one elevator and then get on the "local" to your floor. There was a huge shopping arcade on the elevator- ground floor level. Many bank branches, shops, and restaurants for lunches for the huge crowds of workers. If you've ever seen the film "Koyaanisqatsi" there is footage of the commuters coming up and down the escalators to the PATH station. It was a part of New York. The mall was not beautiful like the one in the Winter Garden at the nearby World Financial Center. It was simply a place you walked through on your way to and from work, and consequently a convenient place to get a few things. There was a great bar called "Tall Ships" in the lobby of the Vista hotel where I drank with my friends after work.

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World_Trade_Center.html

Let me add something to what is being said here.

Last night, there was discussion of another building, near what used to be the World Trade Center Towers, collapsing. I think it was the building at 1 Liberty Plaza in New York.

One of the local anchors on a station here in Washington pointed out that 1 Liberty Plaza was taller than any building in the Washington, DC area....and taller than any building in the Baltimore area as well.

My point is that even some of the "smaller" buildings around the World Trade Center are taller and more massive than some of the biggest buildings in some of the major US cities.

It's so big that I heard it has its own zip code.

I heard each tower had it's own zip code.

Correction, each building had their own zip code.

http://members.aol.com/chopstcks/gallery2/ny/ny5.htm is a good shot from the ground. You can't see part of the top of the building because its in the clouds.

The buildings were the world's tallest skyscrapers until Chicago's Sears Tower was completed in 1974. was a total of 95 elevators, 43,600 windows, and 4.5 million square feet of office space.

http://www.skyscrapers.com/building/864840/e_index.html - site has been having timeout problems but has facts and figures.

It's located at south end of Manhattan island, facing New Jersey. The second pic (bviously a recent shot) shows Manhattan island protruding from the top right. Notice the smoke rising. (Click on image to enlarge)
 

From Britannica.com:
World Trade Center
complex of several buildings around a central plaza in New York City, located at the southwestern tip of Manhattan, near the shore of the Hudson River and a few blocks northwest of Wall Street. It was built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a central facility for businesses and government agencies involved in international trade. Until September 11, 2001, the complex was notable for its huge twin towers, each of which had 110 stories. The roof of One World Trade Center reached to 1,368 feet (417 metres), and Two World Trade Center was 1,362 feet (415 metres) tall. Designed by Minoru Yamasaki and officially opened in 1972, the towers were the world's tallest buildings until surpassed in 1973 by the Sears Tower in Chicago. Each tower had 97 passenger elevators, 21,800 windows, and roughly an acre (0.4 hectare) of rentable space per floor. An observation deck was situated on the 107th floor of the south tower (Two World Trade Center).

Towers 1 + 2 were 110 floors each, with each floor about 1 acre. Buildings 4-7 were various heights, from about 10 - 50 stories, and each floor about 2 acres each. The trade center required two zip codes for postal service. In addition, below the entire land mass (about 10 acres?) there was a large subway station and a mall with stores, restaurants, newsstands, etc - enough to support all the commuters and tourists.

All in all, the destruction if the trade center is the rough equivalent of destroying about 350-400 acres of flat city.

Thank you both for your excellent descriptions.

I used to work nearby close to Wall Street.

I think you're right that much of the rubble was probably compressed into the spaces below.

There's no really good way (except possibly from other subway entrances) of going in to rescue from underneath.

One of the things that makes Manhattan uniquely stable is the granite bedrock on which it is built. You can load millions of tons on top of it in the form of skyscrapers and not have to worry about the ground shifting or settling (except for earthquake level events).

I don't think it would be safe to try to tunnel through from the Wall Street or Chambers Street subway tunnels through granite into formerly open spaces which are now filled with no one knows what.

I believe each tower was 110 stories high. A co-worker here lost her daughter, who worked on the 105th floor. She was talking on the phone and the line just went dead...

Clarification - the number of stories for each building represents above ground stories only. It does not include the below-ground mall, lobbies and subway/PATH/train station.