Dive Brief:

• The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat will not be settling the question on Friday of which is America's tallest building, the new One World Trade Center tower in New York or Chicago's Willis Tower.
• The organization's height committee will meet Friday, and it will hear from speakers who include One World Trade's architect, but the world will not be hearing from the committee until some time later.
• The whole question hangs on whether the unofficial-but-widely-accepted arbiter of height decides that the spike atop One World Trade is a spire or just an antenna mast.

Dive Insight:

It seems like the controversy might have been avoided if original plans had stayed in place, so the 408-foot "structure" that brings One World Trade's height to a symbolic 1,776 feet would be clad in fiberglass and steel. That wasn't how it wound up, however, so the project stands a chance of running afoul of the council's disdain for "vanity height" records achieved with broadcasting gear. If the topper is just an antenna, the height goes down to 1,368 feet and Willis keeps the title.