Below is a transcript of the video above:

I’ve always been fascinated with architecture and skyscrapers (specifically the World Trade Center), as well as the dangerous and daring jobs of construction workers who spend hours on small platforms hundreds of feet in the sky. I never had the chance to visit the World Trade Center before 9/11. Now, a new center is being built by many workers whose own relatives built the original towers decades ago.
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(CBS News) NEW YORK – New York City is very close to putting back what terrorism took away.

Workers on One World Trade Center, the symbolic tower rising near Ground Zero, are erecting steel for the 100th floor on their way to 104.

It will be the tallest skyscraper in North America when its sculpted antenna reaches 1,776 feet.

The CBS Evening News asked several correspondents to go to the top with the iron workers walking the beams more than 1,000 feet in the air. Several declined. But Nancy Cordes and her crew, jumped at the chance.

Getting to the top of One World Trade Center is a job in itself. First you ride up to the 89th floor on two construction elevators. From there, a series of ladders are the only way up to the 93rd floor which has no walls and the sky for a ceiling because it was only built last week.

Tommy Hickey and Michael O’Reilly spend their days scaling foot-wide wide steel beams. They are part of an elite, four-man crew of ironworkers called “connectors.”

“We connect the actual steel structure of the building, the steel skeleton and all the other ironworkers come in behind us,” says O’Reilly.

Two enormous cranes lower the beams into place, then Hickey and O’Reilly bolt them together.

“What we are doing now, is setting that 100th floor,” says Hickey.

How dangerous is it up there?

“Anything can happen, especially with us,” says Hickey. “Fingers, toes, falls, very dangerous and the heights. We’ve just got to watch each other’s back. That’s why I say he is my brother — I’m with him more than my wife, you know? You just got to watch every move you do, and he does so we don’t hurt each other.”

The day CBS visited, they were raising the “cocoon” — a steel and net structure that surrounds the building for safety, so debris doesn’t drop 1,200 feet to the street below.

Working seven days a week, they are now just six feet away from overtaking the Empire State building as the tallest skyscraper in New York, a status the twin towers held before they fell.

“It’s a trophy to come here and do this, you know?” says Hickey. “Biggest job in the city.”

Hickey is a fourth generation ironworker. His grandfather worked on the Empire State building. His father helped to build the South Tower. O’Reilly’s father was terribly injured while building 7 World Trade Center in 1985.

“He was doing what I do now, which is connecting — what me and Tommy do — and he had fallen and was paralyzed,” says O’Reilly. “So that ended my dreams of becoming an ironworker right then. And then 9/11 changed that all over again.”

7 World Trade also fell on 9/11.

“Well, when the building came down it all happened for no reason, so (I felt) let me go in and rebuild it to honor him,” says O’Reilly.

The higher they go, the more punishing the conditions become. It’s 10-15 degrees colder here than at street level. High winds and fog often halt construction.

When the weather does cooperate, these ironworkers can move remarkably quickly — erecting one floor every seven to ten days.

Down below 3,500 workers are welding beams — laying metal rods – and pouring concrete. Building what the architects say will be the strongest skyscraper in the world.

“A lot of pride, yeah, in all these workers,” says Hickey. “I mean, everybody is proud of what they’re doing.”

With WTC 1 finally reclaiming its rightful place in the New York skyline, tower operators will begin the process to try and lure business away from their crosstown rival, the Empire State Building. Most notably being the broadcast customers they lost when the towers fell back in 2001. According to the Post, the gigantic antenna business could easily bring in $10 million in revenue, as broadcasters that beam their signals via the brand new skyscraper.

You can see a nice breakdown of the two towers below, and how they stack up against one another.

One of the hardest things WTC 1 operators will have to do is get people thinking of the new trade center as a place of commerce not as the site of a terrorist attack.

Image Credit: New York Post

1 World Trade Center is slated for a 2015 completion date, and will boast 104 stories (2 more than the Empire State Building).

On Monday, the memorial was opened to the public. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand to welcome the first visitors.

“New Yorkers, Americans and people around the world now have a beautiful, dignified place to pay tribute to the memory of the 2,983 men, women and children we lost in the tragic attacks of 9/11,” he said.

As you would expect, a lot of people want to get a glimpse of the memorial. Over 7,000 came with tickets to visit the memorial. The tickets are free, but reservations are required to enter the new space.

People that showed up without tickets were turned away.

The demand to visit the site and pay respects is high. According to the WSJ, 400,000 people have signed up online to visit the memorial in the next few months.

The memorial features 2,983 names in bronze panels, all encasing 30-foot waterfalls. It’s a truly inspiring piece of design.

But one family has an issue with the memorial, as they discovered on Sunday that the name of their loved one had been misspelled on the memorial.

Jeffrey Schreier was one of 658 people from the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald to die in the WTC attacks. When his sister found his name on the memorial on Sunday, she saw that it read “Jeffery” instead of “Jeffrey.” The second E and the R had been switched.

Schreier’s brother-in-law David Hart had this to say, as reported by MSNBC:

“As I was looking at the name, all of a sudden, I realized this name was not quite spelled correctly.”

“You feel as though Jeffrey’s soul is now looking down and saying, ‘Can’t you get my name right?’”

The spokesman for the memorial has indicated that they are working to correct the error.

I can surely understand how an error like this could affect a grieving family. In a memorial with nearly 3,000 names, I wonder if there are any other errors that have yet to be discovered.

During the afternoon game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants, the league participated in the tribute to the victim of 9/11. A video of a solider playing “Taps” was the background for flag unveilings all around the NFL. The Redskins – Giants game was seen as the 9/11 tribute game, as the two teams represent the two major cities affected by the attacks.

This video was seen by everyone watching the game yesterday –

Flickr and Instagram have immortalized the day with some beautiful photo collections:

Flickr

Instagram

News Corp’s The Daily – its iPad magazine has put together a slideshow for 9/11 in photos.

YouTube partnered with the New York times for a dedicated channel, and has selected a couple of handpicked videos to share on their own blog.

Singing from Ground Zero, Simon’s lyrics resonated with the crowd, and you can see the emotion on their faces as well as Simon’s. A truly touching tribute to everyone that had their life changed by the events of 9/11.

Check it out below –

Here are the details:

New Jersey September 11th Memorial
Located in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, “Empty Sky” New Jersey 9/11 Memorial remembers 746 magnificent New Jersey lives lost on September 11th, 2001. As people gathered at the Hudson River to witness the event, organize rescue efforts and then remember and mourn, they found strength in their community. “Empty Sky” honors the memory of those lost and the special place they called home while framing the view where the Towers once stood. The 746 names are engraved on the twin 210-foot long (the width of each side of the World Trade Center) brushed stainless steel walls that face one another and rise 30 feet in height. Like the World Trade Center, the stainless steel reflects the constantly changing light of day. The memorial invites visitors to literally and metaphorically look toward the empty sky in memory of their loved ones and look forward as a community.

Westchester September 11th Memorial
To honor the 112 magnificent people from Westchester County who perished that day, 112 intertwined stainless steel DNA-like strands rise 80 feet from the ground reaching upward to the heavens to form “The Rising.” The strands are bound together in a literal and symbolic gesture exemplifying the strength of the Westchester community and the families who lost loved ones. Forming an unbroken circle, the 112 individual strands emerge from the existing footprint on the plaza. The memorial’s visual lightness acts as a counterpoint to the solidity of the adjacent Kensico Dam. “The Rising” invites visitors to walk around and through it from all directions and allows persons of all ages and abilities to move through it and experience it close-up.

This weekend, both will be featured in dedication ceremonies. On Saturday at 11Am, there will be one at Liberty State Park for the first one.

For the second, there will be one at the Westchester County September 11th Memorial at 6:00PM.