IUOE Projects
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center
Operating engineers have a long history with the World Trade Center. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, members of Locals 14 and 15 built the twin towers while stationary engineers maintained them for the three decades preceding September 11, 2001.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, operating engineers were first responders, searching for survivors and clearing debris. Unsurprisingly, engineers then built and now maintain One World Trade Center, the skyscraper near where the twin towers stood.
A history of the IUOE on this project
Members of Local 14 in Flushing, New York, help erect the first of two towers of the original World Trade Center in New York City’s Manhattan district beginning in 1968. When completed in 1972 and 1973, the “Twin Towers” were the tallest buildings in the world. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
U.S. News & World Report Magazine Collection [reproduction number, e.g., LC-U9-15739, frame 18].)
Members of Local 14 and Local 15 of New York City help build the new One World Trade Center (or Freedom Tower), the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan that would replace the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center destroyed in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.
Cranes operated by Local 14 and Local 15 members place the final components of the spire at the top of the new One World Trade Center on May 10, 2013, making the
structure a total height of 1,776 feet – a reference to the year in which the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed. The building would open on November 3, 2014.
