New WTC tower officially declared tallest US building

(New York Post, November 12, 2013)

The new World Trade Center tower in New York will replace Chicago’s Willis Tower as the nation’s tallest building when it is completed next year, an international panel of architects announced. Because the needle atop the New York skyscraper is a permanent spire and not an antenna it can be counted when measuring the structure’s height. With the needle, 1 World Trade Center is a symbolically important 541 meters tall. Without it, the building would have been only 416 meters tall — well short of the 442-meter Willis Tower.