Memorial lights honor the place where the Twin Towers once stood as the Statue of Liberty looks on.

A first responder rests amid the rubble.

Workers position a drill several times their height into the ground.

When you’re building a 94-story tower, much of the work is done in the air.

The spire of the finished World Trade Center, one of the 10 tallest buildings in the world.

A Tall Order

Photographs by Joe Woolhead chronicle the demise of the World Trade Center and the building of the new one

When Scott Raab set out to chronicle the construction of One World Trade Center, or Freedom Tower, for Esquire, nothing was certain about the project. After 10 years, $4 billion, and enough setbacks to deter Odysseus, the project was finished, but not before Raab and photographer Joe Woolhead had managed to tell the extraordinary and moving tale of what it took to build what is, after all, an office building over a graveyard. The book, Once More to the Sky, and its photos are a singular kind of time capsule, and revelatory to those who now see One World Trade Center as the place where Condé Nast, its poshest tenant, is trying to cut back its lease. —Jim Kelly