Description New York Where Magazine 1998 Visitors Choice Award. The plaque has a dark gray marble finish on particle board with a plastic cover over a paper certificate. Text on the certificate reads: "WHERE | Visitors Choice Award | The Readers of | Where Magazine | Have Chosen | Windows on the World | As One of the Top 25 | New York City Restaurants | 1998."
Historical Notes This award was given to the owners of the former Windows on the World restaurant.
Curator's Comment Located on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, Windows on the World opened in the spring of 1976. New York magazine marked the restaurant’s debut on its May 1976 cover with a headline declaring it “The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World.” A team of celebrity chefs helped devise menus for the eatery, which featured not only a 300-seat restaurant but also a bar, wine cellar, more intimate dining areas, and private banquet rooms and meeting spaces for hire. With floor-to-ceiling windows, larger than their counterparts elsewhere in the Twin Towers, the multilevel restaurant offered diners stunning panoramic views of New York City and beyond. Tourists and locals alike lined up to reserve their dining adventure in the clouds. Entering 1993, WOW (its popular nickname) was one of the country’s highest-grossing restaurants.
After the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, the restaurant closed for cleaning and major renovations. It reopened in 1996 under new management. The iconic dining establishment in the sky was destroyed in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Seventy-two staff members were killed that day along with the breakfast guests and conference goers they were serving. HIDE