The closest comparisons were smaller eateries Baum had set up with Restaurant Associates in Montreal building complexes Place Bonaventure and Place Ville Marie, both of which had restaurants and shops. What went unsaid in the Times was the name of the main restaurant, a subject that had become an obsession for Baum. He asked everyone he spoke with to weigh in. Hundreds of names were considered.
Tozzoli even set up a contest within the Port Authority to come up with a winning name. Baum thought he had a good one.
It was evocative, patriotic, American, and grand. In honor of it, he began signing his letters with, For Gracious skies. In , Baum commissioned Harris, Kerr, Forster, the accounting firm where he first got his start in New York City, to produce an analysis of the most efficient and cost-effective way to run food services at the WTC. It issued a report that championed a centralized system to take advantage of the economies of scale and mass production. He brought the concept to Guy Tozzoli, who liked the idea.
Baum wanted to construct a central commissary for food delivery, processing, and storage in the basement. Three, he has no history running large projects. Of the innumerable challenges facing Joe Baum and his team, one of the most troubling was the size of the windows themselves.
World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki had developed an unprecedented design for the pair of floor buildings that were to be the tallest in the world. Yamasaki created an inside-out structure: a framed tube made of relatively thin steel columns on the perimeter anchored by a central core that housed the elevators, stairwells, and 47 tapered steel columns.
From the outside, the windows virtually disappeared, giving the buildings a nearly seamless, silver appearance. From the inside, the narrow windows were less than ideal, blocking views and creating a shutter effect or the appearance of a large venetian blind. The integrity of his design was at stake. Yamasaki threatened to quit over the prospect of disrupting his uniform design for better restaurant views.
The PA refused to back down. It was paying for the building, and it needed the restaurant to be a success. So Tozzoli ordered his architect to change the windows.
Yamasaki conceded. He agreed to increase the width of the windows on the th floor. It was only by about half a foot, but it would make a world of difference to the human eye. In particular, criticism was building about how a private club was being constructed with public money. To mitigate the bad impression, Baum needed good marketing. Instead of an amorphous, nameless eatery, Tozzoli and Baum needed an exciting restaurant with a name that would attract New Yorkers, deflect opponents, win over the media, and draw potential tenants.
But a jewel surfaced. It had come from the quarries in Puerto Rico, where Tozzoli and his team had been acquiring building materials. The stone guy who was showing Tozzoli the granite and mar- ble took him to a restaurant where Caterina Valente was singing. It was grand. It was inviting. Especially to tourists. Windows on the World would function as an umbrella name for the group of eateries and bars on the th floor, most of which, other than the main restaurant, had unique names as well.
It was a great relief to Baum to have a name. It gave shape to his vision while he was mired in the details. For the main restaurant alone, he would need to hire dozens of companies to provide the different necessary elements, from upholstery to the gold ceramic tile in the main dining room; from the fabric on the handrails to the crystal and silverware. While those elements were in their earliest stages of procurement or production, Baum was also overseeing the essential task of creating a kitchen floors below, on the B2 level of the World Trade Center, that would streamline food production through an efficient system that took advantage of economies of scale.
There were to be 20 or more different food service operations. On the th floor were the five restaurants and bars, plus catering, that fell under the Windows on the World rubric. On the 44th floor would be a high-end cafeteria.
Baum wanted all of these eateries to share a central commissary, called Central Services, on the B2 receiving dock off Barclay Street. Most restaurants have a porter who works an early shift and opens the door, receiving the sunrise deliveries. A more formal dinner was served at the former, whereas the Greatest Bar on Earth would have themed nights.
Vogt remembers fondly one Latin-themed party called Mambo Baby. Hundreds of people waited in line at the elevators to come up and dance to the Latin bands performing that night. A separate, more intimate restaurant called Wild Blue, tucked off the main Windows space, was a tiny hot-spot for locals, said Vogt.
Tourists preferred to dine in the grander rooms. Warren Beatty would stop in for dinner with his family. Wayne Gretzky used the banquet space for a celebration when he retired from the Rangers. It was a place where celebrities, tourists and New Yorkers rubbed elbows. On the morning of the attack, Feglia left the building at a. He planned on returning to the building around 8 a.
Though his shift started later, he had a meeting at 10 a. He dropped his son off at school that morning and, when he got home, dozed off on the sofa instead of heading in. He awoke to a call telling him to turn on the TV. He saw smoke billowing from the North Tower. The city was so silent. Vogt was driving into the city when he heard about the first plane crash on the radio.
When he left his house he was looking forward to nailing down some specifics about the party. When he arrived in New York it was pandemonium. Vogt was able to get into the city because a few Port Authority police officers recognized his car. He drove to the bottom of Tower 1. I remember looking in my car mirror, making sure my tie was perfect. Few did.
The lobby was full of firemen waiting for orders. As Vogt stood there, a person fell from the tower and landed close to him. Seeing people fall from the tower is still the hardest thing to process, said Vogt. He managed to drive out of the city. Shortly after, the first tower fell. After the attack, nothing could make up for the lives lost or the trauma of helplessly watching the tower collapse from the ground.
But people did what they could. Therapy and psychological support were given. Customers reached out offering money and all-expenses-paid vacations. They told Feglia their doors were open if he needed to stay in their homes. They made it their mission, he said, to get people the help they needed. Vogt worked every day, figuring out the legal and financial support they could offer the displaced employees.
There were too many government agencies, organizations and individuals offering support. Feglia went to Uruguay for a time to heal and be with family. There was no government assistance set up for undocumented people, yet Windows of Hope and other support organizations wrote out checks to the families of the about 15 undocumented employees who died. Not just for their families in New York, but back in their home countries, too.
Vogt said they defined children as the unborn some women were pregnant to young adults in college — up to doctorate programs. The money paid for nursery schools, private schools, medical programs. We just wrote the checks," said Vogt. Windows intends to keep dolling out money until For Gen Z, Sept.
A relief center that gave money and support to former Windows employees morphed into the nonprofit ROC United in Emil, they said, promised to offer jobs to Windows workers at his new Times Square restaurant Noche, but fell short of that promise. The goal was to give Windows workers a job, while offering training to help others gain experience in the restaurant industry.
According to Eater New York , the restaurant was slammed with allegations of late payments and alleged wage theft. It closed in and reopened with a bold vision in December Colors, despite its ambitious goal, opened and closed and opened again, eventually faltering due to mismanagement, said Siby, and shuttered for good in
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