13 Years After 9/11, World Trade Center Reopens For Business

Thirteen years after the 9/11 terrorist attack, the resurrected World Trade Center is again opening for business

The World Trade Center toppled more than 13 years ago in the sad September 11 terrorist attack has been rebuilt and is now open for business.

The silvery, 1,776-foot skyscraper that rose from the ashes of 9/11 to become a symbol of American resilience opened for business Monday, as 175 employees of the magazine publishing giant Conde Nast settled into their first day of work in their new offices.

"The New York City skyline is whole again," says Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns both the building and the 16-acre World Trade Center site.

Steps away from the new tower are two memorial fountains built on the footprints of the decimated twin towers, a reminder of the more than 2,700 people who died in the terrorist attack.

Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, is expected to move in about 3,000 more employees by early next year, eventually occupying 25 floors of the $3.9 billion, 104-story tower, the nation's tallest building.

Foye counters widespread fears aboout the new building, saying that it's "the most secure office building in America." And its chief architect, T.J. Gottesdiener, said the high-rise was built with steel-reinforced concrete that makes it as terror attack-proof as possible — much stronger than the original towers that collapsed on themselves when the hijacked planes hit.

The stairwells are built with a hardened concrete core, and wider to allow firefighters to move while people exit. The building's mechanical systems are also encased in hardened concrete.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center (pictured in 2000) in New York which were destroyed during the 9/11 attacks in 2001

"If my son told me he had a job in the trade center Tower 1, I would have no qualms about him being there,"Gottesdiener said.

After 9/11, he said, architects took pains to figure out new ways to make a high-rise safer, working with the New York Fire Department, buildings officials and police, while learning from new techniques from construction in cities worldwide.

Finally, computerized simulations were used to calculate what would happen with people in the building.

The eight-year construction of the skyscraper came after years of political, financial and legal infighting that threatened to derail the project.