Spire for WTC sails into harbor

The crowning spire of the World Trade Center's tallest building arrived in New York Tuesday -- in giant steel pieces on a barge that floated in past the Statue of Liberty.

"It signifies that we're back, we're better than ever, and it shows the resilience of not just New York, but also people in general," said Steven Plate, the director of post 9/11 construction at the lower Manhattan trade center.

"The spire is a candle on the cake," said Plate, speaking aboard a boat that followed the barge tugged into New York Harbor from New Jersey's Port Newark.

For the nine parts of the spire, which were too heavy to be driven in, Tuesday marked the end of a 1,500-nautical-mile journey that started in Canada on Nov. 16.

A plant outside Montreal helped produce a total of 18 pieces to be erected atop One World Trade Center, rising into the Manhattan sky by spring to complete the 1,776-foot high-rise.

The heaviest piece of spire weighs nearly 70 tons.

Symbolizing America's freedom, it will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, Plate said.

The remaining pieces of the 408-foot, $20 million spire are being trucked in from Canada and South Plainfield, N.J., the location of another plant in the coproduction.

The spire is a joint venture between the ADF Group Inc. engineering firm in Terrebonne, Quebec, and New York-based DCM Erectors Inc., the prime steel contractor for the tower.

As the barge docked at a pier on the Hudson River, workers on the roof of the 104-story skyscraper were pouring the concrete base that will encircle the spire -- to be erected in what is now an empty round socket.

With liquid concrete belching from tubes linked to a street-level source, the roof resembled the deck of a busy, mammoth schooner. Iron girders crisscrossed the air under three giant cranes rising like metal masts in the wind.

The spire will provide public transmission services for television and radio broadcast channels that were destroyed along with the towers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.