The New Yorker: From the Archive Soaring above the lower end of Manhattan Island is the world's largest cluster of tall buildings, whose oblongs, spires, and turrets have, since this century began, given New York the most spectacular skyline anywhere. Each one of the towers whose upper extremities pierce the clouds is rooted, below the city's surface, in a huge, unseen structure that may itself be the size of a ten-story building. The finishing touches are now being put on the biggest foundation in the world, which is below what are, as of now, the highest pair of buildings in the world. These are the twin hundred-and-ten-story towers of the World Trade Center, built for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Nine or ten good-sized office or apartment buildings could have been fitted into the hole that was dug for the Trade Center, and the foundation proper is six times as large as that of the usual fifty-story skyscraper and four times as large as its closest competitor—the basement of the neighboring sixty-story Chase Manhattan Bank Building.