One World Trade Center: Now Tallest Building In US, Freedom Tower Reaches Height Of 1,776 Feet

One World Trade Center is nearing completion and today the spire was hoisted and fixed to the top of the building making One World Trade Center the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

Construction on the new Freedom Tower as it was once called, began in 2006 and little by little the hole left in the New York City Skyline has been filling up. There was a lot of debate about what the building replacing the Twin Towers should look like. Some believed the original Twin Towers should have been rebuilt, others agreed a new design was in order.

Soon the building at One World Trade Center will be finished and ready to house a new set of offices sometime in 2014. Still it won't be easy for those working One World Trade Center to forget what happened there in 2001.

Now that the spire has been placed on top of the Tower "it makes the building the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, 47 feet taller than Chicago's Willis Tower, though it is substantially shorter than towers in the Middle East and Asia," Reuters reports.

As the spire was being secured into position on top of the new One World Trade Center construction workers and people on the streets of downtown NYC cheered and shouted feeling mixed emotions about what the Freedom Tower represents.

One construction worker that spoke with Reuters told the newspaper "I am very happy, but also sad, because why did we have to rebuild this tower? It's a proud day for the city."

One World Trade Center is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in a press release the Port Authority described the newly finished spire as having "18 sections of steel [and] includes three communication rings and a maintenance platform. The Beacon which is atop the spire contains 288 50-watt LED modules...the light produced by the LED modules will be visible up to 50 miles away on a clear day."

The Director of Construction at One World Trade Center told CNN affiliate WABC that the spire is a "beacon that'll be seen for miles around and give a tremendous indication to people around the entire region, and the world that we're back and better than ever."