New York City’s revival from its darkest hour 13 years ago will be completed on Monday, when One World Trade Center officially opens for business.
The western hemisphere’s new tallest building, also known as Freedom Tower, will welcome Condé Nast as its first tenant. The publishing giant is making the 20th to the 44th floors its new global headquarters.
Exclusive Pictures of the New 9/11 Museum
A shattered portion of the enormous broadcasting antenna that topped the north tower of the World Trade Center.Floto+Warner for TIMESome of the massive artifacts salvaged from the towers almost have the appearance of abstract sculpture, like this 10,000 pound elevator motor.Floto+Warner for TIMEThe exterior skin of the museum’s irregularly shaped entry pavilion is banded with alternating stripes of polished and matte finish stainless steel, which meet an angular wall of clear glass.Floto+Warner for TIMETwo 80 ft. (24 m) “tridents” from the World Trade Center’s facade rise through the glass-enclosed atrium of the museum’s entry pavilion, with its crisscrossing steel trusswork. The stairway leads down to the mostly belowground museum.Floto+Warner for TIMEThe remains of “Ladder 3." On the morning of the attacks, it carried 11 firefighters to the scene. All of them died in the collapse of the towers.Floto+Warner for TIMEA photo by modern pictorialist photographer Joseph Ruzicka, an early member of the Camera Club of New YorkJoseph Ruzicka—CCNYAn interior gallery displays the “Cross at Ground Zero." A steel T-beam salvaged from the wreckage of the towers, it became a rallying point for rescue and recovery workers at the site. Floto+Warner for TIMEA twisted fragment of steel from the north tower testifies to the immense heat and pressure of the Trade Center collapse.Floto+Warner for TIMEThis pay phone, found in the wreckage at Ground Zero, was once installed on the 107th floor observation deck of the south tower, more than a quarter mile above the street.Floto+Warner for TIMEA river line valve sits in the museum’s Foundation Hall before a portion of the Trade Center’s slurry wall, a barrier that held firm after the towers collapsed, preventing the Hudson River from inundating lower Manhattan.Floto+Warner for TIMEThe “Survivors’ Stairs” were an escape route used by many people on 9/11. At the museum they have been installed alongside the final stretch of the ramp by which visitors make their way down to the exhibition galleries.Floto+Warner for TIME
“It’s long anticipated and we’re looking forward to it,” Condé Nast spokeswoman Patti Rockenwagner said.
The 1,776-ft. high tower was initially set to open in 2006 but became fraught with delays and political grappling. It provides a statement of hope and resurgence on the New York City skyline after the attacks of 9/11 that destroyed the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center.
“I’m like everybody else, looking at this place in amazement,” Kevin Murphy, who headed the team of ironworkers that helped piece the tower together, told TIME in March. “This is going to define New York.”
