After weather ruined Monday's attempt, the Port Authority is getting ready to lift the final piece of 1 World Trade Center's spire into place. One completed, the 408-foot spire will make the building 1,776 feet—America, fuck yeah.
NBC New York has live video of the spire-ing:
The entire spire cost $20 million and will act as an antenna. The Port Authority maintains that this will make 1 World Trade Center the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, but there's debate about that, since cladding around the spire was removed from the design (as a cost-saving measure). As The Guardian explains:
This strange debate flared up last May, when the design of the mast was changed, removing the cladding of the "radome" (short for radar dome), and saving around $20m. SOM had originally designed a decorative sheath of interlocking triangles of fibreglass and steel, 7m at its widest point. Without the cladding, the mast is left exposed as a straightforward pole of steel trusses, about 2m wide and intersected by wider maintenance platforms.
"This definitely raises questions," said Kevin Brass, the public affairs manager for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the body that passes official judgment on such things as whether your erection is tall, supertall or megatall. "Our criteria are very specific. We include spires and not antennas. If this is an antenna, it won't be part of the height measurement. The cladding was an integral part of the design and made the extension part of the permanent look and feel of the building."
If 1 WTC doesn't make the cut, then Willis Tower in Chicago will be the tallest, followed by the Trump International in Chicago, then 1 WTC.
