Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York, is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business and government in the City of New York, which itself originated at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in 1624, at a point which now constitutes the present-day Financial District. The population of the Financial District alone has grown to an estimated 61,000 residents as of 2018, up from 43,000 as of 2014, which in turn was nearly double the 23,000 recorded at the 2000 Census. Lower Manhattan is defined most as the area delineated on the north by 14th Street, on the west by the Hudson River, on the east by the East River, on the south by New York Harbor; when referring to the Lower Manhattan business district and its immediate environs, the northern border is designated by thoroughfares about a mile-and-a-half south of 14th Street and a mile north of the island's southern tip: around Chambers Street from near the Hudson east to the Brooklyn Bridge entrances and overpass.
Two other major arteries are sometimes identified as the northern border of "Lower" or "Downtown Manhattan": Canal Street half a mile north of Chambers Street, 23rd Street half a mile north of 14th Street. The Lower Manhattan business district forms the core of the area below Chambers Street, it includes the World Trade Center site. At the island's southern tip is Battery Park. South of Chambers Street are the planned community of Battery Park City and the South Street Seaport historic area; the neighborhood of TriBeCa straddles Chambers Street on the west side. North of Chambers Street and the Brooklyn Bridge and south of Canal Street lies most of New York's oldest Chinatown neighborhood. Many court buildings and other government offices are located in this area; the Lower East Side neighborhood straddles Canal Street. North of Canal Street and south of 14th Street are the neighborhoods of SoHo, the Meatpacking District, the West Village, Greenwich Village, Little Italy and the East Village. Between 14th and 23rd streets are lower Chelsea, Union Square, the Flatiron District, as well as Gramercy, with the large residential development known as Peter Cooper Village—Stuyvesant Town situated on the eastern flank of this zone.
The area that would encompass modern day New York City was inhabited by the Lenape people. These groups of culturally and linguistically identical Native Americans traditionally spoke an Algonquian language now referred to as Unami. European settlement began with the founding of a Dutch fur trading post in Lower Manhattan called New Amsterdam in 1626; the first fort was built at The Battery to protect New Netherland. Soon thereafter, most in 1626, construction of Fort Amsterdam began; the Dutch West Indies Company imported African slaves to serve as laborers. Early directors included Peter Minuit. Willem Kieft became director in 1638 but five years was embroiled in Kieft's War against the Native Americans; the Pavonia Massacre, across the Hudson River in present-day Jersey City resulted in the death of 80 natives in February 1643. Following the massacre, Algonquian tribes nearly defeated the Dutch; the Dutch Republic sent additional forces to the aid of Kieft, leading to the overwhelming defeat of the Native Americans and a peace treaty on August 29, 1645.
On May 27, 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was inaugurated as director general upon his arrival. The colony was granted self-government in 1652, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653; the first mayors of New Amsterdam, Arent van Hattem and Martin Cregier, were appointed in that year. In 1664, the English conquered the area and renamed it "New York" after the Duke of York and the city of York in Yorkshire. At that time, people of African descent made up 20% of the population of the city, with European settlers numbering 1,500, people of African descent numbering 375. While it has been claimed that African slaves comprised 40% of the small population of the city at that time, this claim has not been substantiated. During the mid 1600s, farms of free blacks covered 130 acres where Washington Square Park developed; the Dutch regained the city in 1673, renaming the city "New Orange", before permanently ceding the colony of New Netherland to the English for what is now Suriname in November 1674.
The new English rulers of the Dutch New Amsterdam and New Netherland renamed the settlement back to New York. As the colony grew and prospered, sentiment grew for greater autonomy. In the context of the Glorious Revolution in England, Jacob Leisler led Leisler's Rebellion and controlled the city and surrounding areas from 1689–1691, before being arrested and executed. By 1700, the Lenape population of New York had diminished to 200. By 1703, 42% of households in New York had slaves, a higher percentage than in Philadelphia or Boston; the 1735 libel trial of John Peter Zenger in the city was a seminal influence on freedom of the press in North America. It would be a standard for the basic articles of freedom in the United States Declaration of Independence. By the 1740s, with expansion of settlers, 20% of the population of New York were slaves, totaling about 2,500 people. After a series of fires in 1741, the city became panicked that blacks
Norval White
Norval Crawford White was an American architect, architectural historian and professor. He designed buildings throughout the U. S. but he is best known for his writing the AIA Guide to New York City. White was considered to be one of the great figures of New York architecture. White was born in 1926 to surgeon William Crawford White and social worker Caroline White, he went to the Allen-Stevenson School and Exeter. In 1958 he married Joyce L. Lee, they had four sons: William, Thomas and Alastair. Following two years on active duty with the United States Naval Reserve during World War II, White received a B. S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949. He attended École des Beaux-Arts and earned a Master of Fine Arts from Princeton University School of Architecture in 1955. White resided in the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights before moving to northwestern Connecticut in the early 1990s, he retired and lived in the commune of Roques in the French department of le Gers with his second wife, Camilla Crowe until his death on December 26, 2009.
In 1962, upon hearing of the imminent demolition of New York City's historic Pennsylvania Station and several other architects, including Willensky, founded AGBANY. They handed out fliers in protest. In 1967, White and Willensky proposed a guide to New York City architecture to the American Institute of Architects; the AIA Guide to New York City, a 464+ page guidebook featuring over 2600 buildings in its first edition The fourth edition of this guide was issued in 1999 without further contributions from Willensky, who had died in 1990. From 1968 to 1973, White worked as a partner-in-charge with Gruzen and Partners, on the development of the New York City Police Headquarters building. White was able to finalize the 5th edition of the AIA Guide before his death, published in 2010; as a professor, White taught architectural history and design, first at Cooper Union and from 1968 at the School of Architecture and Environmental Studies at the City College of New York, where he served as the founding chairman and where he continued to teach until he retired.
AIA Guide to New York City with Elliot Willensky. The Architecture Book New York: A Physical History The Guide to the Architecture of Paris Regarding the AIA Guide to NYC Amazon.com Metropolitan Home article greatbuildings.com quote of White/Willensky on the United States Custom House in NYC Archiplanet.org Architecture Week listing
Clinton and Russell
Clinton and Russell was a well-known architectural firm founded in 1894 in New York City, United States. The firm was responsible for scores of notable New York City buildings and throughout the city. Charles W. Clinton was born and raised in New York and received his formal architectural training in the office of Richard Upjohn, he left Upjohn in 1858 to begin a private practice, from through 1894 he conducted his own significant career, the highpoint of, the 1880 Seventh Regiment Armory. William Hamilton Russell was born in New York City as well, he attended the Columbia School of Mines before he joined his great uncle, James Renwick, in his architecture firm in 1878. At Columbia, Russell had been a member of St. Anthony Hall, the secret fraternal college society, within a year of his joining his great uncle's firm, in 1879, Renwick completed the first St. A's Chapter House, at 25 East 28th Street with Russell involved in the design work. In New York City's ambitious building boom circa 1900, Clinton and Russell were responsible for designing the world's largest apartment building, the world's largest office building, a cluster of early downtown skyscrapers along Broadway and Wall Street for banks and insurance companies.
Many of the firm's important commissions related to real estate investments of the Astor family. The landmark Astor Hotel that served as an anchor for the development of Times Square, the Astor Apartments, the Graham Court Apartments, The Apthorp were among their projects for William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor. Stylistically, much of their work conformed to a conservative Italian Neo-Renaissance style. After the deaths of the principals the firm continued in business, in 1926 it was renamed Clinton Russell Wells Holton & George. For a time the English-born Colonel James Hollis Wells headed the organization; the firm remained in existence until 1940. for Clinton's independent commissions prior to 1894, see Charles W. ClintonFahys Building, 52-54 Maiden Lane, 1894-96 Sampson Building, 63-65 Wall Street, 1898 Hudson Building, 32-34 Broadway, 1896–98 Exchange Court Building, 52-56 Broadway, 1896-98 Woodbridge Building and Platt Streets, NYC, 1898 Curzon House, facade redesign of #4 East 62nd Street, NYC, 1898 the Franklin Building, 9-15 Murray Street, 1898 the Chesebrough Building, 13-19 State Street, Battery Park, NYC, 1899 Graham Court Apartments, 1899-1901 Medbery Hall, Dorm Building for Hobart College, 1900 Broad Exchange Building, #25 Broad Street, New York City, 1900 Coxe Hall and Classroom Building for Hobart College, 1901 American Exchange National Bank Building 128 Broadway, 1901 the 18-story Atlantic Building, aka the Mutual Insurance Building and William Streets, 1901 Astor Apartments, 1901-1905 Wall Street Exchange Building, 43-49 Exchange Place, 1903 Beaver Building, 1904 Hotel Astor, New York City, 1904, expanded 1909-1910 71st Infantry Regiment Armory, Park Avenue and 34th Street, NYC, 1905 The Langham Apartments, one of the towering apartment buildings lining Central Park West between West 73rd and West 74th Streets, 1905-1907 U.
S. Express Company Building, 2 Rector Street, 1905–07 The Apthorp Apartments the largest apartment building in the world, NYC, 1906-1908 Consolidated Stock Exchange Building, 61-69 Broad Street, 1907 Lawyers' Title Insurance & Trust Company, 160 Broadway, NYC, 1908 the 31-story Whitehall Building Annex, 1908-1910 the Hudson Terminal in lower Manhattan, the world's largest office building by floor area when built in 1908, razed in 1962 for the World Trade Center Whyte's Restaurant, Fulton Street, designed as a "half-timbered English village inn", 1910 redesign of Clarence True's 103-104 Riverside Drive, 1910-1911 Otis Elevator Building, 260 Eleventh Avenue, 1911-1912 East River Savings Bank Building, NW corner of Broadway and Reade Streets, 1911 portions of the Elks National Home, Virginia, 1916 The Lenox Hotel, 1917. 250 S. 13th Street Philadelphia, PA Mecca Masonic Temple in collaboration with the architect Harry P. Knowles, now known as New York City Center Lillian Sefton Dodge Estate, Mill Neck, Nassau County, New York, 1923 The Level Club, New York City, 1927 Herald Square Building, 1350 Broadway, New York City, 1928-1930 Cities Service Building called the American International Building, 1932 7 East 67th Street facade
Manhattan
Manhattan referred to locally as the City, is the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City and its economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U. S. state of New York. The borough consists of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson and Harlem rivers. S. mainland, physically connected to the Bronx and separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem River. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each aligned with the borough's long axis: Lower and Upper Manhattan. Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial and entertainment capital of the world, the borough hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization: the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, the borough has been the setting for numerous books and television shows. Manhattan real estate has since become among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed US$3 trillion in 2013. Manhattan traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan. Manhattan is documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders, which equals $1038 in current terms; the territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790; the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty and peace.
Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898. New York County is the United States' second-smallest county by land area, is the most densely populated U. S. county. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a census-estimated 2017 population of 1,664,727 living in a land area of 22.83 square miles, or 72,918 residents per square mile, higher than the density of any individual U. S. city. On business days, the influx of commuters increases this number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York City's five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, is the smallest borough in terms of land area. Manhattan Island is informally divided into three areas, each aligned with its long axis: Lower and Upper Manhattan. Many districts and landmarks in Manhattan are well known, as New York City received a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017, Manhattan hosts three of the world's 10 most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, Grand Central Terminal.
The borough hosts many prominent bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge. Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement; the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government. Numerous colleges and universities are located in Manhattan, including Columbia University, New York University, Cornell Tech, Weill Cornell Medical College, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 40 in the world; the name Manhattan derives from the Munsee dialect of the Lenape language'manaháhtaan'. The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at the lower end, considered ideal for the making of bows.
It was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen. A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. Alternative folk etymologies include "island of many hills", "the island where we all became intoxicated" and "island", as well as a phrase descriptive of the whirlpool at Hell Gate; the area, now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City, he entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named the land around Upper New York
Financial District, Manhattan
The Financial District of Lower Manhattan known as FiDi, is a neighborhood located on the southern tip of Manhattan island in New York City. It is bounded by the West Side Highway on the west, Chambers Street and City Hall Park on the north, Brooklyn Bridge on the northeast, the East River to the southeast, The Battery on the south; the City of New York was created in the Financial District in 1624, the neighborhood overlaps with the boundaries of the New Amsterdam settlement in the late 17th century. The district comprises the offices and headquarters of many of the city's major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Anchored on Wall Street in the Financial District, New York City has been called both the most financially powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, the New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest stock exchange by total market capitalization. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Financial District, including the New York Mercantile Exchange, NASDAQ, the New York Board of Trade, the former American Stock Exchange.
The Financial District is part of Manhattan Community District 1 and its primary ZIP Codes are 10004, 10005, 10006, 10038. It is patrolled by the 1st Precinct of the New York City Police Department; the Financial District encompasses the area south of City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan but excludes Battery Park and Battery Park City. The former World Trade Center complex was located in the neighborhood until the September 11, 2001 attacks; the heart of the Financial District is considered to be the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, both of which are contained within the district. The northeastern part of the financial district was known in the early 20th century as the Insurance District, due to the large number of insurance companies that were either headquartered there, or maintained their New York offices there; until the late 20th and early 21st century, the neighborhood was considered to be a destination for daytime traders and office workers from around New York City and the surrounding areas.
The neighborhood now has a growing number of full-time residents, to an estimated 61,000 residents as of 2018, over double the 23,000 recorded at the 2000 Census, with many buildings being converted from office space to apartments and condominiums after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Although the term is sometimes used as a synonym for Wall Street, the latter term is applied metonymously to the financial markets as a whole, whereas "the Financial District" implies an actual geographical location; the Financial District is part of Manhattan Community Board 1, which includes five other neighborhoods. Federal Hall National Memorial, on the site of the first U. S. Capitol and the first inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States, is located at the corner of Wall Street and Nassau Street; the Financial District has a number of tourist attractions such as the South Street Seaport Historic District, newly renovated Pier 17, the New York City Police Museum, Museum of American Finance.
National Museum of the American Indian, Trinity Church, St. Paul's Chapel, the famous bull. Bowling Green is the starting point of traditional ticker-tape parades on Broadway, where here it is known as the Canyon of Heroes; the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Skyscraper Museum are both in adjacent Battery Park City, home to the Brookfield Place. For census purposes, the New York City government classifies the Financial District as part of a larger neighborhood tabulation area called Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan. Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan was 39,699, an increase of 19,611 from the 20,088 counted in 2000. Covering an area of 479.77 acres, the neighborhood had a population density of 82.7 inhabitants per acre. The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 65.4% White, 3.2% African American, 0.1% Native American, 20.2% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 0.4% from other races, 3.0% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.7% of the population.
The entirety of Community District 1, which comprises the Financial District and other Lower Manhattan neighborhoods, had 63,383 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 85.8 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are young to middle-aged adults: half are between the ages of 25–44, while 14% are between 0–17, 18% between 45–64; the ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 11% and 7% respectively. As of 2017, the median household income in Community Districts 1 and 2 was $144,878, though the median income in the Financial District individually was $125,565. In 2018, an estimated 9% of Financial District and Lower Manhattan residents lived in poverty, compared to 14% in all of Manhattan and 20% in all of New York City. One in twenty-five residents were unemployed, compared to 9 % in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 38% in Financial District and Lower Manhattan, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 45% and 51% respectively.
Based on this calculation, as of 2018, Financial Dist
Citgo
Citgo Petroleum Corporation is a United States-based refiner and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants and other industrial products. Headquartered in the Energy Corridor area of Houston, it is majority-owned by PDVSA, a state-owned company of the Venezuelan government; the company traces its heritage back to oil entrepreneur Henry Latham Doherty. After climbing the ladder of success in the manufactured gas and electric utility world, Doherty in 1910 created Cities Service Company to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities, he began by acquiring gas-producing properties in southwest. The company developed a pipeline system, tapping dozens of gas pools. To make this gas available to consumers, Doherty moved to acquire distributing companies and tied them into a common source of supply. Cities Service became the first company in the mid-continent to use the slack demand period of summer to refill depleted fields near its market areas. Thus, gas could be inexpensively withdrawn during peak demand times.
In 1931, Cities Service completed the nation's first long-distance high pressure natural gas transportation system, a 24-inch pipeline 1,000 miles long from Amarillo, Texas to Chicago. A logical step in the company's program for finding and developing supplies of natural gas was its entry into the oil business; this move was marked by major discoveries at Augusta, Kansas, in 1914, in El Dorado a year later. In 1928 a Cities Service subsidiary, Empire Oil & Refining, discovered the Oklahoma City field, one of the world's largest. Another participated in the discovery of the East Texas field, which, in its time, was the most sensational on the globe. Over three decades, the company sponsored the Cities Service Concerts on NBC radio; the long run of these musical broadcasts was heard on NBC from 1925 to 1956, encompassing a variety of vocalists and musicians. In 1944, it was retitled Highways in Melody, the series was known as The Cities Service Band of America. In 1964, the company moved its headquarters from Oklahoma, to Tulsa.
At the height of Cities Service's growth, Congress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which forced the company to divest itself of either its utility operations or its oil and gas holdings. Cities Service elected to remain in the petroleum business; the first steps to liquidate investments in its public utilities were taken in 1943 and affected over 250 different utility corporations. At the same time, the government was nearing completion of a major refinery at Rose Bluff just outside Lake Charles, that would become the foundation of the company's manufacturing operation. Using designs developed by Cities Service and the Kellogg Co. the plant was dedicated only 18 months after groundbreaking. A month before Allied troops landed in France, it was turning out enough 100-octane aviation gasoline to fuel 1,000 daily bomber sorties from England to Germany. Government funding through the Defense Plant Corporation prompted Cities Service to build plants to manufacture butadiene, used to make synthetic rubber, toluene, a fuel octane booster and solvent.
In the years that followed, Cities Service grew into a diversified oil and gas company with global operations. Its green, expanding circle marketing logo became a familiar sight across much of the nation. During this time CEOs such as W. Alton Jones and Burl S. Watson ran the company. Cities Service Company inaugurated use of the Citgo brand in 1965 for its refining and retail petroleum businesses. CITGO continued to be only a trademark, not a company name, until the 1983 sale of what had been the RMT Division of Cities Service to Southland Corporation. In 1982, T. Boone Pickens, founder of Mesa Petroleum, offered to buy Cities Service Company. Citgo responded by offering to buy Mesa, the first use of what became known as the Pac-Man take-over defense. Cities Service threatened to dissolve itself by incremental sales rather than being taken over by Mesa, stating that it believed that the pieces would sell for more than Pickens was offering for the whole. Cities Service Company located what they thought would be a "white knight" to give them a better deal and entered into a merger agreement with Gulf Oil Corporation.
Late in the summer of 1982, Gulf Oil terminated the merger agreement claiming that Cities Service's reserve estimates were over-stated. Over fifteen years of litigation resulted. Two years Gulf Oil itself would collapse as a result of a Pickens-initiated takeover attempt. In the chaos that ensued after Gulf Oil's termination of its deal, Cities Service entered into a merger agreement with, was acquired by, Occidental Petroleum Corporation—a deal, closed in the fall of 1982; that same year, Cities Service Company transferred all of the assets of its Refining and Transportation division into the newly formed Citgo Petroleum Corporation subsidiary, to ease the divestiture of the division, which Occidental had no interest in retaining. Pursuant to an agreement entered into in 1982, Citgo and the Citgo and Cities Service brands were sold by Occidental in 1983 to Southland Corporation, original owners of the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores. Fifty percent of Citgo was sold to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.
A. in 1986, which acquired the remainder in 1990, re
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Additional people died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks. Four passenger airliners operated by two major U. S. passenger air carriers —all of which departed from airports in the northeastern United States bound for California—were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed. Debris and the resulting fires caused a partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures.
A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, which led to a partial collapse of the building's west side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was flown toward Washington, D. C. but crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, after its passengers thwarted the hijackers. 9/11 is the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history and the single deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed, respectively. Suspicion fell on al-Qaeda; the United States responded by launching the War on Terror and invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which had failed to comply with U. S. demands to extradite Osama bin expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Many countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent terrorist attacks. Although Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader denied any involvement, in 2004 he claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Al-Qaeda and bin Laden cited U. S. support of Israel, the presence of U. S. troops in Saudi Arabia, sanctions against Iraq as motives. After evading capture for a decade, bin Laden was located in Pakistan and killed by SEAL Team Six of the U. S. Navy in May 2011; the destruction of the World Trade Center and nearby infrastructure harmed the economy of Lower Manhattan and had a significant effect on global markets, which resulted in the closing of Wall Street until September 17 and the civilian airspace in the U. S. and Canada until September 13. Many closings and cancellations followed, out of respect or fear of further attacks. Cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002, the Pentagon was repaired within a year. On November 18, 2006, construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site; the building was opened on November 3, 2014. Numerous memorials have been constructed, including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington County and the Flight 93 National Memorial in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Although not confirmed, there is evidence of alleged Saudi Arabian involvement in the attacks. Given as main evidence in these charges are the contents of the 28 redacted pages of the December 2002 Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; these 28 pages contain information regarding the material and financial assistance given to the hijackers and their affiliates leading up to the attacks by the Saudi Arabian government. The origins of al-Qaeda can be traced to 1979. Osama bin Laden helped organize Arab mujahideen to resist the Soviets. Under the guidance of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden became more radical. In 1996, bin Laden issued his first fatwā. In a second fatwā in 1998, bin Laden outlined his objections to American foreign policy with respect to Israel, as well as the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War.
Bin Laden used Islamic texts to exhort Muslims to attack Americans until the stated grievances are reversed. Muslim legal scholars "have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries", according to bin Laden. Bin Laden orchestrated the attacks and denied involvement but recanted his false statements. Al Jazeera broadcast a statement by bin Laden on September 16, 2001, stating, "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." In November 2001, U. S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in Afghanistan. In the video, bin Laden admits foreknowledge of the attacks. On December 27, 2001, a second bin Laden video was released. In the video, he said: It has become clear that the West in general and America in particular have an unspeakable hatred for Islam.... It is the hatred of crusaders. Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people....
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