One World Trade Center has finally reached 100 stories! Kind of. It turns out that 100 is kind of a flimsy number since some of the floors don’t even exist, The Wall Street Journal reports.
While the top of the tower’s steel frame is currently at the 100th floor, Tishman spokesman John Gallagher confirmed in an email, the tower was only at 93 stories just a few weeks ago. The tower is rising really, really fast—an average of 9.5 feet a week— but not 7 stories in 2 weeks fast.
So what happened?
Basically, floors 94 through 99 don’t exist.
“It is fairly common practice in the design of high-rise towers to see variable floors counts,” a spokesman for the Port Authority said told The Journal.
The tower, which is now 1,240 feet above the ground, will eventually reach 104 stories (1,368 feet). It will soon be taller than the Empire State building (1,250), but such skyline dominance may be short-lived with residential tower 432 Park Avenue now expected to reach 1,397 feet.
Completion of the tower is anticipated at the end of 2013, Gallagher tells us.
There’s also other strange stuff afoot, like the fact that not all floors are of equal height. The final office floors, which end at 90, as well as floors 91, 92 and 93, which hold mechanical equipment, have higher than normal ceilings. And because the tower has a 186-foot, uninhabitable base, the lobby at the top of the base structure is located on the 19th floor.
This all makes us feel dizzy and disoriented—kind of like looking down from the top of the 100th floor.
kvelsey@observer.com
