World Trade Center's Guy Tozzoli keeps center's spirit alive

Guy Tozzoli, head of the World Trade Centers Association, also known as "Mr. WTC," oversaw the building of the trade center and was a key organizer of the 1964-65 World's Fair. He now develops trade centers around the world. (Tiffany L. Clark)

Welcome to the World Trade Center in exile.

Seven years after the Twin Towers were destroyed, Guy Tozzoli, the man who directed the construction of the World Trade Center and knew every inch of it, carries on the center's founding mission of peace and stability through trade in a building miles north of Ground Zero.

There, in a fifth-floor suite near Grand Central Terminal, Tozzoli, 86, oversees the World Trade Centers Association, the organization that proves the ideas embodied in the World Trade Center transcend 110-story skyscrapers, rooftop restaurants and observation decks. It's also the philosophical home of New York's World Trade Center -- that is, until the association moves into a gleaming new tower at Ground Zero in 2012.

That will be exactly 50 years after Tozzoli -- his Port Authority career soaring from a high-profile World's Fair assignment -- was tapped to get the trade center project done, a feat that the world watched closely during the 1960s.

"When people came to visit me, the question was always the same, what's a World Trade Center," said Tozzoli of the curiosity the Twin Towers elicited as they went up. The story of the association is wound up in the epic, if short-lived history of New York's trade center.

In 1970, the year the North Tower reached its full height, Tozzoli founded the World Trade Centers Association, a private, nonprofit and nonpolitical group that harkens back to the trade center's pioneering days, when businesses in the pursuit of international trade were clustered together for their greater good.

"Everyone helps everybody else, because it's in their benefit, they don't compete, they actually work," Tozzoli said of the association, which consists of 750,000 companies in 91 countries.

New York's original World Trade Center may be gone, but hundreds of WTCs flourish around the globe. Indeed, the attacks on the Twin Towers have done nothing to destroy the idea of trade centers: there were 289 just after 9/11, and today there are 311, with dozens more in the planning stages.

Tozzoli, known as Mr. World Trade Center, and his team kept the organization alive even during the dark days of late 2001.

Tozzoli himself witnessed the attack on his buildings from his car in New Jersey, and despite desperate attempts, was not able to reach the towers. He had played a key role in evacuating people from the North Tower when it was first struck by terrorists in 1993. On the morning of Sept. 11, a bus accident snarled traffic on his way to work, and that may well have saved his life. He was scheduled to be at Windows on the World when the two planes hit.

"And I said to myself, God says you're not supposed to go there today. I drove back to Westwood N.J. at 25 miles an hour," Tozzoli said of that morning.

It was during that wrenching period that an idea was born that dramatically underscores the motto "peace through trade." Months after the attack that destroyed the Twin Towers, a World Trade Center was opened in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, the nation that hosted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

"A very strong inspiration came a little later that we should make a World Trade Center there," said John Dickson, co-chairman of World Trade Center Kabul. "The trade center's the best way for a country that's been forced into isolation under the Soviet system for so long to get ... immediately back in a network of people. It was kind of as radical idea, but Guy really loved it and the board got behind it."

It's a small affair now -- just three stories, hardly an iconic skyscraper -- and it still lacks a strong foundation for business, given the violence that roils the country, but it's symbolism is beyond words.

"When people are doing business with one another, they're not going to start banging each other on the head. That's very, very important," said Robert DiChiara, the association's executive vice president.

Indeed, WTCs opened in places like Moscow during the Cold War, a fact that makes Tozzoli proud. "I said the United States and you don't quite get along, but it might be a good idea if we work together and they have a beautiful World Trade Center in Moscow," Tozzoli said.

His eyes light up as he enthusiastically tells stories of dealings with global leaders, and with New York's high and mighty like powerbroker Robert Moses, who became a close friend, WTC architect Minoru Yamasaki, and Mayor John Lindsay, who he says was initially reluctant to accept the landfill from WTC excavations that would become the base for Battery Park City.

Tozzoli's life changed forever in 1962, when Port Authority chief Austin Tobin put him in charge of building something called the World Trade Center. The project was seen by David Rockefeller, the head of Chase Manhattan, as a bold stroke to revitalize the Financial District.

"Rockefeller asked the Port Authority to look into the matter. It was more than that. His brother [Nelson] was the governor of New York. And what he said to the Port Authority was, 'You will do this.' And I was told, 'You're in charge. You're going to do this.' And it was a great journey," Tozzoli said.

It was difficult in the beginning – renting out the towers proved harder than thought, a story today's WTC planners know too well. But by 2001, the World Trade Center had become an intrinsic part of the skyline and an unqualified success, its vast office floors full and its restaurant and observation decks teeming with visitors.

This 9/11, Tozzoli will be away from New York, traveling on World Trade Center business.

"I'm usually here on 9/11, and I usually just go about my business because I did what I could do. I have a lot of theories about how you should work," Tozzoli said.

Indeed, Tozzoli is optimistic and forward-looking by nature. While in is heart, he wishes his lost towers could be rebuilt, Tozzoli points to an image of the new World Trade Center, and Tower 4, which the association will occupy. "That's the future over there."

But for the man who built the towers, the pain over the human loss is never far away.

"A lot of people died, I can't bring them back to life. And I can get quite angry at what the people did. But the trade center was beyond that."

Related topic galleries: New Jersey, Guerrilla Activity, Battery Park, Manhattan (New York City), Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Local Authority, September 11, 2001 Attacks