rebuilt site, the 104-floor One World Trade Center that dominates the post-9/11 Manhattan skyline and is the city’s tallest building.

A fourth planned skyscraper is 2 World Trade Center, the foundation of which was built up to street level several years ago. That’s where the money also stopped, due to the lack of an anchor tenant that would make financing more likely.

Developer Larry Silverstein, who is responsible for erecting the third and fourth towers, told the Associated Press he is confident he will find an anchor tenant, noting “failure was not an option”.

Workers guide a boom pouring concrete on top of 3 World Trade Center in New York. Behind them is One World Trade Center. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP



As for the rest of the 16-acre site, there is the shimmeringnew transportation hub, with huge, white “wings” that Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava says represent the souls of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 attacks.

The all-white marble underground concourse that crosses the entire trade center site is filled with shops that will also open in August.

Blocked off by chain-link security fences and armed guards is a bulky new dark gray building at the site’s south-west corner, with vehicle ramps leading underground. This is the security center that will screen trucks loaded with deliveries. The hard-core, concrete and steel construction of the complex is softened by the grass and trees surrounding the two memorial pools built in the footprints of the twin towers.

And in the works on the roof of the security center overlooking the memorial is