The New York Times has a video of what you’ll see when you take the elevators to the observatory atop One World Trade Center–and it’s pretty neat. An animated time lapse in all 5 elevators shows the development of the city’s skyline, from the 1500s to today from the perspective of your exact spot inside One World Trade Center. Immersive, floor to ceiling LED technology lines each elevator, and you’ll go from bedrock in the early 1500s to the natural shoreline of the early 1600s. But look closely, there seem to be some time errors in the 19th century.
Dutch and colonial buildings start to pop up in the late 1600s and early 1700s, you’ll see the shoreline get extended, and a dense early city by the Revolutionary War. In the distance, the Brooklyn Bridge will appear in the 1800s, along with some early skyscrapers and St. Paul’s Church. We’ll have to look more carefully, but there seems to be a bit of a discrepancy in time as the video shows the Park Row Building going up in the late 1830s when it actually opened in 1899. The now-demolished Singer Building, once the tallest in the world, is show to go up in the 1850s but it didn’t open until 1908.
The date of the original World Trade Center opening is correct, and you see the elevator become wrapped in the recognizable pattern of the original Twin Towers in 1971, and fast forwarding to 2006 is the completion of 7 WTC. In about 2010, the beams of the new 1 WTC enter the frame until you arrive to the 102nd floor deck.
Opening on May 29th, tickets are available online already with adults at $32, senior $30 and children at $26. As reported by Curbed NY, this pricing is in line with other New York City observation decks (Empire State is $29).
Next, check out 6 architectural proposals for 1 WTC that didn’t make it and the top 10 skyscrapers in the world above 100+ floors (including 1 WTC).
