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World Trade Center

Footage of World Trade Center from a work print


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Production Company: Western Electric
Audio/Visual: silent, color
Keywords: need keyword

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: edgertor - - March 16, 2011
Subject: ID for this film
This film is called 'The Twins' and was produced by Western Electric in 1976.

there will be a sound version up on the at&t tech channel site in a few months.

Reviewer: phreakerg - - September 3, 2010
Subject: Film Originally Had Sound
Distinctly remember watching film with a narrator briefly stating that WTC is designed to withstand the impact of jet airliner due to extreme hight.

Reviewer: longfade - - July 2, 2010
Subject: Interesting.
A brief enough walk through some of the major construction phases of the WTC. You can see the SS Rotterdam being ushered into a berth at the beginning. I used to work on that ship. Anyway, another fascinating bit of American history.

Reviewer: ERD - - April 11, 2006
Subject: Extremely emotional
Most Americans watching this film of the construction of the NY World Trade Center will feel a deep sadness remembering its final hours.

Reviewer: aps-jaw - - December 16, 2005
Subject: Western Electric /World Trade Center
I was exploring the net and found the film clip shot at the World Trade Center. I worked for Western Electric at the Trade Center. I think I'm the Western Electric employee, bending down in the film, working on the ESS frame. What a shock. I remember an industrial film being made at the time. I also remmber being filmed in a couple of the scenes. I worked for Western Electric for about 2 1/2 years until a major lay off. After all these years, seeing the distuction of the Trade Center, I felt a personal loss. I no longer live in NYC but have been back twice to pay my respects, remember the past and think about the future.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - April 18, 2005
Subject: Original Ground Zero
Pretty frightening film all about the construction of the WTC. We see the original Ground Zero, the construction of the girders (they look too familiar like the girder that was the unofficial memorial of the disaster), installation of electronic equipment, and finally, the people working there. I doubt the people shown in this movie were still there during the WTC attack.. But still it's a frightening thought.
A MUST SEE on this site!

Reviewer: TheHOODLUM - - June 22, 2004
Subject: raw footage
This film was raw footage most likely used to make a film for Western electric or a Bell operating company. Allthough some may find scenes of the trade center being constructed as sad it is still worth looking at. There are several scenes showing the installation of a #1ESS Western Electric central office telephone switch. I never knew there had been a full switch at the WTC until I saw this film.

Reviewer: Ryan Schweitzer - - April 20, 2004
Subject: The WTC in it's beginning...
This film is, as the previous poster mentioned, a short, but sweet profile of the World Trade Center in better times, during it's construction and later occupation by corporations such as Flying Tigers air freight (which since has been merged into UPS (I think)).

I think the reason why there's no sound, is possibly because this film is raw camera footage or part of a conformed or work print for a AT&T/Western Electric industrial film, assuming from the title of this film (0585 PA8360 World Trade Center (Western Electric #9)), and the fact that it shows telco techs installing and setting up what looks like PBX switches for the building, most definitely Bell System/Western Electric equipment, and brief glimpses of a couple of Teletype Model 35 receive-only (RO) machines in the background, which were used quite often for printing out status messages from the computerized telephone switches of the time of this film (such as the ESS 1, 2, & 3 switches, which are probably the ones in this film, I'd assume). Teletype & Western Electric were subsidiaries of the Bell System (AT&T) at the time.

As for the rest of the film, and as the previous poster mentioned as well, it does provide a somewhat haunting look at the WTC when it was still being built, from the scenes of the workers welding beams for the framework, to the scene in the film of an empty office floor with the technicians drilling holes in the floor to install the racks of phone switches...

Definitely worth downloading...

Reviewer: Roland Deschain - - August 18, 2003
Subject: An all too brief look...
It's really a shame that this has no audio - the original recording clearly must have had some kind of soundtrack.

We see the construction of the World Trade Center, which is (for me anyway) still quite eerie, especially where they lift the now iconic frame into place. Watching cars drive around the dirt foundation (which looks as it is today) is another example.

It's hard to know exactly whats going on in some parts, like when people are shown operating what looks to be power/security/phone systems. The imagery surely makes up for it in any case.

The entry escalators and the lobby are shown as are businesses trading.

Even with the lack of sound (and especially because of the small file size) this is one thing in the Prelinger Archives which you shouldn't be without.