The Freedom Tower

The race for the tallest building is still on.

AmNew York business editor Andrew Lisa says “the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park will reshape Manhattan’s skyline and force a revision of the record books that catalog the city’s giants.
The Freedom Tower is low on this totum pole.
The 54-story Bank of America building stands 945 feet tall,” the AmNew York story says, “but the building tops out at 1,200 feet with the addition of an ornamental spire, inheriting the title of New York’s second-tallest skyscraper.” That title was held by the Chrysler Building since Sept. 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers were destroyed and the Empire State Building returned to the top spot.

“The building is topped off already,” said Jordan Barowitz, director of external affairs of the Durst Organization, the real estate development firm that partnered with BofA to erect the building. “The last piece of steel went in a few weeks ago and the first tenants will arrive in May 2008.”
One Bryant Park doesn’t break any records without its decorative spire, but the use of such a device to raise a tower’s bragging rights isn’t out of the ordinary.

“It’s very common that some ornamental feature would raise the bar that extra bit,” said Carol Willis, architectural historian and director of the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City. “You saw that historically, certainly with the Chrysler Building and the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, which was the first world’s tallest that was not in the United States.”

The erection of the twin, bridge-linked Petronas Towers was a watershed moment for architectural classification, she said.

“A different version of ‘tallest’ came into play with the towers,” Willis said. “A controversy arose over the question of [whether] height should be measured from the top of the needle as opposed to the roof …”

The new World Trade Center’s Freedom Tower … will claim its patriotic 1,776-foot height by means of a massive antenna. The top floor will be more than 400 feet below.”
Oh!