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The Bathtub refers to the underground foundation area at the site of the World Trade Center and accompanying buildings in New York City. Despite its title, it does not hold any water, rather it keeps water out (from the Hudson River) and acts as a bathtub in reverse.
The Bathtub encompasses a large, roughly rectangular excavation down to bedrock surrounded by reinforced concrete walls, intended to serve as dams to prevent water intrusion from the nearby Hudson River (North River). The reason for the use of this method was due to the fact that the land on which the World Trade Center was to be constructed upon was man-made waterlogged landfill, that had accumulated over centuries and extended out over the Hudson River from the original Manhattan shoreline with bedrock located 65 feet (20 m) below. By removing the water from this area it would have severely damaged the water level and thus the foundations of buildings surrounding the World Trade Center site.
The Bathtub contains a 16 acre (~65,000 m²) site, including seven basement levels, the downtown terminal of the Port Authority Trans-Hudson rapid transit line, and the preexisting New York City Subway IND E line. The South Tower of the World Trade Center was actually built around the PATH tubes that passed through the foundation area, thus service was uninterrupted throughout the whole of the construction period. The waterproof walls are three feet (~1 meter) thick and 70 feet (~21 meters) high.
The excavated material that was dug up to build the bathtub was again used as landfill to construct Battery Park City, and the same method was also used to construct the foundation area of the Willis Tower in Chicago.
It was feared that the wall might collapse during the removal of debris from the September 11th attacks, endangering workers and possibly compromising other buildings and flooding a significant portion of the subway system. To prevent this, reinforcements were attached to bedrock to shore up the bathtub walls.
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