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The way they were

NEWSDAY STAFF

September 11, 2006

A longtime employee at Cantor Fitzgerald once described what it was like to work more than 100 stories above the earth.

Come to work on a cloudy day, and take the elevator up to 105. There, above the cloud line, you could look out the window onto a beautiful, sunny sky.

Rising more than 1,300 feet, the massive towers that fell on Sept. 11, 2001, began as part of a massive urban renewal project by the Port Authority. They were the centerpiece of a 10-million-square-foot complex bounded to the north by Vesey Street, to the east by Church Street, to the south by Liberty Street, and to the west by West Street.

The towers employed up to 50,000 people since opening, the north tower in 1970 and the south in 1972. Briefly, they were the tallest buildings in the world, until Chicago's Sears Tower opened in April 1973.

Though often criticized as sterile and lacking in character, the towers came to symbolize New York's belief in a prosperous future. In the end, the wreckage came to symbolize its sorrow.