The Twin Towers Get Their Ribbon

On April 4, 1973, officials from New York and New Jersey held the formal ribbon-cutting for the World Trade Center on the plaza in Lower Manhattan, more than two years after tenants had already started moving into the North Tower. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Governor William Cahill of New Jersey led the ceremony, but a strike by the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen against the Port Authority had shut the PATH trains and kept Secretary of Labor Peter Brennan away, so a Port Authority chairman read President Nixon's remarks in his place. The Port Authority's twin towers, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, had already claimed the title of world's tallest building away from the Empire State Building, a crown Chicago's Sears Tower would take back within weeks. New Yorkers were not universally impressed. Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable used her New York Times column the very next day to call them big but not great.