1 WTC under construction When it was decided that 1 World Trade Center’s needle would not no longer be enclosed by a radome, its potential status as the tallest building in the United States was called into question. The technicality was over whether the needle was considered an antenna or a spire. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has just ruled it to be a spire, which is considered structural. This brings the building to its planned 1,776 feet (and 1,368 feet without the spire, which is was the height of the north tower of the original Twin Towers), beating out Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). Despite this coup, the building still contains quite a bit of “vanity height,”–uninhabitable floors that nonetheless increase the statue of a building. We previously reported on ten buildings whose vanity height take up the greatest percentage of their stature. At the time The Atlantic Cites reported, “New York City… Read More