4 World Trade Center First to Open

One World Trade Center, which is planned to open next year, is now officially considered the tallest building in the western hemisphere, while its sister building, 4 World Trade Center, will actually be the first to open its doors tomorrow.  

Being hailed as a more conservative yet “compelling” alternative to One World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center stands, by today’s standards, a modest 977 feet. It features a rather stunning visible-to-the-public, 46-feet-high, 150-feet-wide lobby, which is actually the largest in New York City and looks out onto the 9/11 Memorial. 

Recent guests of the tower’s development group, Silverstein Properties, were quite amazed by the views they had of New Jersey as well as of neighboring towers One and 7, especially from its 57th floor terrace which spans 1,500 square feet.  

4 World Trade Center boasts a unique glassy facade that marvelously reflects everything surrounding it and manages to effortlessly blend into the sky as it towers 72-stories high. Of course, this was exactly the plan world-renowned Japanese Architect Fumihiko Maki had in mind; he intended to create an illusion that would make the 150 Greenwich Street building “disappear into the sky.” 

Although, the ribbon cutting will take place tomorrow, we still have a while before tenants will actually occupy the building. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who will be leasing 600,000 square feet of space, won’t move its headquarters into the building until early 2015—and the same goes for the tower’s expected restaurants and shops. 

Regardless, we are certain that plenty of people will take trips to see the skyscraper, even if just to see it from the street—c’mon, look at its beautiful pictures.