Image © WTC Tower 1, LLC
The World Trade Center is back on top. The Lower Manhattan site’s signature tower on Tuesday secured the designation as the country’s tallest building at 1,776 feet, as the nonprofit Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat ruled its 408-foot mast was considered part of the building’s architecture. The ruling by the Chicago-based group — the accepted arbiter on matters of skyscraper height — wrests the vertical crown from Chicago’s Willis Tower, the formerly named Sears Tower that measures 1,451 feet tall to its roof and has been the country’s tallest since it was completed in 1974.