Long before the World Trade Center became synonymous with the most damaging terrorist attack in U.S. history, it was a symbol of engineering brilliance. Upon its completion in 1973, the two towers that rose from the 16-acre (64749.7-square-meter) complex consisting of seven different buildings in lower Manhattan were the tallest structures in the world. But the construction of such mammoth structures had its challenges.
The first major challenge was the building site itself. The location selected for the project, on Manhattan's Lower West Side, had been built upon generations of landfill that had actually grown and compacted on itself so much that it had extended the Lower West Side of Manhattan into the Hudson River. To reach a solid base of bedrock, workers had to dig down 70 feet (21.3 meters). But because of the proximity of the river, a barrier needed to be created that would keep the excavated section of the city from filling with water as fast as the earth was removed.
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