| Before a pair of commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001, few Americans had ever seriously considered the possibility that such a collision might occur. But one of the buildings’ principal designers had. Two months after the catastrophe, The New Yorker’s John Seabrook wrote about the architecture and engineering behind the Twin Towers—which, for a time, had been the tallest buildings in the world. Leslie E. Robertson, one of the two men “mainly responsible” for the skyscrapers’ structure, had consciously devised them to withstand a jetliner crash. “I’m sort of a methodical person,” he said, “so I listed all the bad things that could happen to a building and tried to design for them.” Robertson, who was seventy-three at the time of the article, was haunted by the collapse of his creations; Seabrook describes him as “trembling” as he gazed at Ground Zero through a nearby window. But the towers’ design proved a salvation for thousands who might otherwise have died. Despite absorbing the force of aircraft much larger, and carrying far more fuel, than Robertson had likely imagined, the buildings stayed upright long enough for most of those below the impact sites to flee. Seabrook’s article, published at a moment when the shock of the attacks was still fresh, reminds us of the staggering tragedy of that day—and of the dedication of the first responders, and of the architects and engineers, who devote their lives to keeping us safe. | 
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