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" Yesterday&amp;#039;s putative topping-out of the Freedom Tower, aka 1 World Trade Center, was delayed due to high winds. That&amp;#039;s the bad news. The good news? So glad you asked. I&amp;#039;ve spent the past 8 years writing about rebuilding the World Trade Center, and I&amp;#039;ve got some. Good news, that is. To begin with, like nearly all of the public pronouncements associated with the rebuilding of Ground Zero, the topping-out proclamation was sheer bullshit. The last two pieces of the tower&amp;#039;s spire were to have been lifted from the ground and set down upon the roof, there to await attachment to the rest of the spire. While it&amp;#039;s true that hoisting very heavy things 1,368 feet into the air without any sort of disaster is marvelous, it ain&amp;#039;t a topping-out by any standard. So you and I and the rest of humankind didn&amp;#039;t miss anything special. The tower will not reach 1,776 feet anytime soon. There&amp;#039;s also the sad fact that the tower was first supposed to top out nearly ten years ago, according to George Pataki, former New York governor and the guy who decided Freedom Tower would be its name. You could argue that the endless delay might make a real topping-out even more wondrous and joyful; we&amp;#039;ll see. Meanwhile, another few weeks will serve to heighten the world&amp;#039;s lack of anticipation, buried so long ago beneath a mountain of meaningless press releases. Writer-at-large Scott Raab has covered the rise of the new World Trade Center like no one else. Read all eight parts of a continuing Esquire series as grand as the new tower itself.   &amp;quot;The Engineers,&amp;quot; February 2006Architect David Childs is faced with the challenge of bomb-proofing the tower. Engineers Pablo Lopez and Andrew Pontecorvo declare the bedrock stable. Construction superintendent Carmine Castellano figures out how to build a tower over a subway station.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a22414/world-trade-center-spire/?click=esq_more>