World Trade Center Rising From Ground Zero

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, an 80-story glass and steel tower is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of ground zero.

The site called a "hole in the ground" for years has cranes in the air, trains running underground and hundreds of trees planted around giant, man-made waterfalls to remember the dead of Sept. 11.

And the surrounding neighborhood — no longer just a financial district — is bursting with young families, new schools, a Whole Foods and a Barnes & Noble.

Tourists squint and point their cellphones at 1 World Trade Center, once known as the Freedom Tower.

"I'm kind of proud because I was here two weeks after 9/11 and this was a dust pit," said Larry Brancato, 59, of Wallingford, Conn, walking by ground zero. "It just shows that Americans have always had a can-do attitude."

After years of inertia, and prolonged disputes between government agencies, insurer and a developer who had just taken out a 99-year lease on the towers when they were toppled, the development of the trade center is substantial, and the tallest tower can now be seen for miles.

"People can begin to see that this is no longer a hole in the middle of New York, but a real place is emerging," said architect Daniel Libeskind, whose master plan serves as a blueprint for the site.

A memorial featuring waterfalls cascading into the footprints of the twin towers will open to the public on Sept. 12, a day after families see their loved ones' names around the pools for the first time. The skyscraper formerly known as the Freedom Tower is growing by a story a week and now stands 1,000 feet above the skyline as the tallest building in lower Manhattan. A transit station and a second office tower also are taking shape.

As the trade center lay in smoking ruins in 2001, New Yorkers debated the future of the 16-acre superblock that the twin towers had dominated. Some wanted to rebuild the two 110-story skyscrapers exactly as they had been. Others said that out of respect for the nearly 3,000 dead, the entire tract should be a memorial or a park.

Larry Silverstein, the developer who signed a lease on the twin towers on July 24, 2001, pushed to rebuild the 10 million square feet of office space he had lost. Civic groups pushed for a more neighborhood-friendly design than two monoliths on a concrete plaza.

Libeskind, who won a competition to become the site's master planner, focused on the Freedom Tower, with an asymmetrical spire soared to the symbolic height of 1,776 feet and echoed the Statue of Liberty across the harbor. He set aside half the site for a memorial that left empty the spots where the destroyed towers stood, and set space for a performing arts center to add culture to the commerce and to the

Tensions were inevitable between Libeskind's artistic vision and Silverstein's desire for buildings that would draw tenants.

Now, Libeskind said, "the tensions are gone."

1 World Trade hardly resembles Libeskind's early drawings, but he called it "an impressive building."

Designed by David Childs, its tapering form is symmetrical but retains the spire and the 1,776 feet. To guard against truck bombs, the bottom 20 floors will be windowless, reinforced concrete covered by glass. The base will house infrastructure like generators and air-conditioning systems.

Critics warned that 1 World Trade would be hard to fill. Who would work in a symbolically loaded building at a location that terrorists had attacked twice? Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer once called the Freedom Tower a white elephant.

It's looking less like that now that Conde Nast has signed a lease to move its trendsetting magazines like Vogue, Glamour and Vanity Fair to 1 World Trade when the building opens in 2014.

Christopher Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site, called the Conde Nast agreement "a phenomenal game changer."

"The Conde Nast deal has really jump-started interest downtown," Ward said.

Under a deal between Silverstein and the Port Authority, the authority is building 1 World Trade Center on the northwest corner of the site; Silverstein wants to build three office towers on the east side of the 16 acres. The first of Silverstein's buildings, known as 4 World Trade, was up to 48 floors this week. Silverstein says the 947-foot tower designed by Japan's Fumihiko Maki will be finished before the taller 1 World Trade, catty-cornered across the site.

The Port Authority, which lost its headquarters and 85 employees on Sept. 11, will move into the second tower rising at the site when it is complete. Silverstein says other "household name" tenants will follow.

With the economy nosediving and Silverstein and the Port Authority battling over who should finance two unbuilt towers — designed by architects Richard Rogers and Lord Norman Foster — the future of those buildings looked doubtful a couple of years ago.

An analysis prepared for the Port Authority in 2009 projected that there might