1 WTC Named Tallest Building in the U.S., Spire is Ruled to be Structural

1 WTC under construction

When it was decided that 1 World Trade Center’s needle would not no longer be enclosed by a radome, its potential status as the tallest building in the United States was called into question. The technicality was over whether the needle was considered an antenna or a spire. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has just ruled it to be a spire, which is considered structural. This brings the building to its planned 1,776 feet (and 1,368 feet without the spire, which is was the height of the north tower of the original Twin Towers), beating out Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). Despite this coup, the building still contains quite a bit of “vanity height,”–uninhabitable floors that nonetheless increase the statue of a building.

We previously reported on ten buildings whose vanity height take up the greatest percentage of their stature. At the time The Atlantic Cites reported, “New York City has two of the top 10 tallest vanity heights in the world and the city will gain a third when the new One World Trade Center opens in 2014.”

Check out our previous article on the world’s tallest buildings in New York City.