ABSTRACT
The Empire State Building, built during the Great Depression, is a monumental reminder of the optimism and entrepreneurial spirit of what is now considered the "Golden Age" of industrial capitalism. By the time the World Trade Center (WTC) went into construction in the mid-1960s, it was already being referred to as "the mountain downtown". The WTC was designed to attract a global audience, to inspire feelings of awe- and stand out in a symbolic landscape already crowded with architectural landmarks. As the architectural historian William Curtis notes, the conditions of possibility for expressing the "new" were markedly different in Europe with its longstanding historical traditions, than in the United States. Both modernity and modernism are associated with the attempt to break with the constraints and traditions of the past and develop new ways of thinking about and being in the world.
