One World Trade Centre: Up New York's Freedom Tower

Last year, it was officially recognised as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, following considerable controversy over whether the spire was an adornment or “integral” to the building.

The first tenants have now started to move into their offices. The mirrored, cubist edifice is expected to open later this year, finally restoring to the public a part of the city that has been out of bounds since 9/11.

“It’s a huge step — it’s no longer ground zero, it’s the World Trade Centre now,” said Douglas Durst, whose company, the Durst Organization, has bought a stake in the building from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“It’s been surrounded for 12 years by barricades, inaccessible. This is going to make a dramatic difference.”

Around 55pc of the building has been let so far, to tenants including Conde Nast, the publisher of magazines such as Vogue and Wired, Vantone Industrial, the Chinese property group, and Group M, part of Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP empire.

Talks with finance and media companies are still ongoing, and Durst estimates it will reach around 70pc occupancy by the time the building opens.

Legends Hospitality Group has taken the observatory desk on the 101st and 102nd floors, around 1,300 feet above ground. The whole building promises to be a big business - the Empire State Building made $63m in profits last year.

But of course, One World Trade Centre will attract tourists for more than just its spectacular view.

The building is inextricably linked with one of the most horrific acts of terrorism in the world, and is likely to become a place of pilgrimage for Americans who want to pay tribute to those that died in the atrocity.

There are delicate nods to the Twin Towers throughout the building. In the cavernous entrance hall, the walls are lined with white marble slabs from the same quarry used to decorate the first World Trade Centre.

With the nostalgia, however, comes a fear that the new building could become a target once again. Its design has been through a number of revisions with this in mind.

^{View from the upper floors}

The original architect, Daniel Libeskind, proposed dedicating the upper floors to a series of “sky gardens”, so that offices would be restricted to the lower floors. The eventual structure, adapted and designed by David Childs, includes a 57m concrete pedestal to ward off terrorist attacks from ground level.

Inside, the walls and floors are very thick: 14,000lbs of concrete per square inch, compared to the 900lbs that is standard for skyscrapers. There is a waterproof fire lift, and lifts and multiple stairways are housed in a reinforced column “like a bunker”.

Wall Street gossips claim there are missile launchers on the roof, although the building’s developers are quick to scotch that rumour.

“The safest place to be in any incident in New York will be One World Trade Centre. It is the safest building on the planet,” says Mr Durst.

What about if another plane is hijacked? “There is no building safe from a plane,” he says, adding that tight security on aircrafts means the odds of anyone emulating the attack that destroyed the Twin Towers are very slim indeed.

Even so, the building’s developers are offering tenants an extra carrot. The rate for the lower two thirds of the building is $75 per square foot per year, but the city and state of New York are offering incentives that reduce that figure to $69.

Larry Silverstein, the property developer who owned the lease on the World Trade Centre complex in 2001, has recouped his money from the insurers. It now falls to the tax payer-funded Port Authority, which long ago gave up hope that this would be a money-spinner, even in the medium term.

If it was fully occupied, at market rate, One World Trade Centre would garner around $120m a year, and take around 35 years to recoup the costs of construction.

But, as one of the workers on site says, that’s hardly the point. “This building wasn’t built to make money. It was built to demonstrate something to the world.”

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