Two World Trade Center, one of the last pieces of the ground-zero reconstruct, is finally taking place. We have actually seen strategy after prepare for it given that the aughts, from Norman Foster and Bjarke Ingels and then Foster again, and the most recent iteration of his newest one, first revealed several years ago, now has a tenant and a conclusion date. American Express announced this morning that it will move out of its longtime home at 200 Vesey Street, just throughout West Street, and take the entire building, all 2 million square feet of it.
Tower 2 will fill the staying gap in the phalanx of structures surrounding the memorial swimming pools on the site of the original trade center, though it will not rather end up the complex. (The unbuilt outlier is 5 World Trade, which will stand somewhat apart on the other side of Liberty Street. JPMorgan Chase was going to resettle there and decided to keep everyone uptown rather.) The 2 WTC website– owned, like the rest of the land, by the Port Authority of New York City and New Jersey– is now inhabited by a placeholder structure of corrugated steel which contains mechanicals for the future structure, one covered with murals that are ebullient if out of character with the location’s corporate visual. At one point, there was talk of putting homes there instead of office, and when Foster’s newest design was revealed a couple of years earlier, it appeared potentially anachronistic– a lot empty commercial space plopped into a city where back-to-the-office was not a safe bet.
Clockwise from top left: Exterior, peak, and Greenwich and Fulton Street frontages. Photo: Foster + PartnersPhoto: Foster + PartnersPhoto: Foster + PartnersImage: Foster + Partners
From top: Exterior, peak, and Greenwich and Fulton Street frontages. Image: Foster + PartnersImage: Foster + PartnersPhoto: Foster + PartnersPhoto: … From top: Façade, peak, and Greenwich and Fulton Street frontages. Photo: Foster + PartnersImage: Foster + PartnersImage: Foster + PartnersPhoto: Foster + Partners
Although that is still true for lots of workers, it’s now clear that fresh office space will offer just fine in the foreseeable future; it’s the older structures that are begging for tenants. So up it will go, 55 stories and 1,200-plus feet garlanded in plant on the terraces, and problem to the 1980s pyramid-roofed leviathan over at Brookfield Location that Amex is vacating, which is most likely to sit vacant for some time. Amex says the new tower will be finished in 2031, at which time Norman Foster will be 96 and the designer, Larry Silverstein, will be turning 100.
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