former building complex in lower Manhattan, New York City, consisting of seven buildings and a shopping concourse on a 16-acre (6.5-hectare) site; it was destroyed by a terrorist attack in Sept., 2001. Prior to its destruction, the World Trade Center had been the world's largest commercial complex, home to many businesses, government agencies, and international trade organizations. Most prominent among its structures were the 110-story rectangular twin towers, one rising to 1,362 ft (415 m) and the other to 1,368 ft (417 m), with floors roughly an acre in size.

Designed by Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth, the towers and concourse portion of the center were completed in 1973 at a cost of $750 million. For a brief period (until the completion of the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1974), the towers were the tallest buildings in the world. They remained the largest structures on the E seaboard of the United States, an internationally known landmark and tourist attraction rising high above the skyline of lower Manhattan. In 1993 a terrorist car-bomb explosion damaged portions of the complex, killing six people and causing more than $300 million in damage. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other Islamic extremists were convicted of conspiracy and other charges related to the bombing in 1993. and the so-called mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, was convicted in 1998.

On Sept. 11, 2001, a second terrorist attack, in which two hijacked commercial jetliners were crashed into the towers, ignited huge fires in the upper stories of both buildings, weakening them and leading to their collapse. Other structures in the complex were completely or partially destroyed as a result, and many surrounding buildings were severely damaged. More than 2,700 people, including the passengers and crew of the airliners and several hundred emergency personnel responding to the initial fires, lost their lives; more than 7,000 people were injured. In 2003, after a lengthy design competition, a preliminary plan for rebuilding the site was approved. Created by the Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind, the design includes a sunken memorial space honoring the victims of 9/11 that features an exposed section of the concrete slurry wall, several multi-use buildings, and a public plaza.

The enormity of the events of September 11, which also involved a similar attack with a hijacked jetliner on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the crash in W Pennsylvania of a fourth hijacked plane, galvanized national feeling in the United States, where many watched the events unfold on television. In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in history, President George W. Bush announced a war on terrorism, and many nations pledged their support. Al Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, was identified by U.S. authorities as being behind the attacks, and the United States subsequently began military operations in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based and where the government was closely allied with him, In Dec., 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who had been arrested (Aug., 2001) on immigration violations in Minnesota, was indicted on charges that he was part of the conspiracy responsible for the September attacks.

See studies by E. Darton (1999), A. K. Gillespie (1999), W. Langewiesche (2002), and J. Glanz and E. Lipton (2003).

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

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