My office was at 15th Street, the Port Authority building, for many years. And every day I'd go down to the site. It's less than a mile and a half. And when the steel was going up, I -- one day I took the construction elevator to the 13th floor. I remember that. And the construction elevators were in the middle, where they -- where the elevators were, elevator core. As I stepped out of the elevator, I looked and I said, "My God. The columns are so close together," only 19 inches wide, the window, and so deep, because of the strength that you needed, that from the center or unless you were right up against the windows, you really couldn't get a view if you looked to the side.

And I had wanted a great restaurant on one top of one building, and I had wanted an observation deck inside on the other building. And so I came back to the office and I called Mr. Levy. Mal Levy was my deputy for architects. He dealt with Yama all the time. And I said, "Listen, call Yama and tell him that for the two top floors," -- that is, top floors below the mechanical floors, 107 -- "that we need to have windows at least half again as wide, and we need to put higher strength steel so we could make what's called mullions in windows," make them smaller so people could look out.

And Austin Tobin was -- was my boss. He was head of the Port Authority. And he loved architects. And I think maybe he wanted to be one. And he was a great executive and a great lawyer. So there was a box on my table behind my office, and the light went on. Austin Tobin is on the phone, on his box, and he says, "Come up here, Guy, please." I came, went to his office. And he said, "I just had a word from Mr. Yamasaki. He said you're ruining his architecture." I said, "How am I doing that?" He said, "You're going to change the width of the windows." And I said, "Austin, it's a quarter of a mile in the sky. And I'm only increasing them from 19 inches like to 29 inches." And... the mullions -- I said, "Otherwise you can't see out, except by looking straight ahead. And it's okay in offices, but not for a great view restaurant that I hope we'll have there some day." So he said, "I'm sorry, Guy. Can't do that."

So now I go to work. And I had Joe Baum, one of the greatest restauranteurs I've ever known in my life. Joe was my consultant for what would eventually became Windows on the World. And so on the top of the building at 15th Street, we built a model of what I wanted to build and what Yamasaki wanted to build. And the building kept going up

Now, if you stopped the construction of the World Trade Center for standby time, it would cost $1 million a day. So therefore you couldn't stop the construction. And we used to do three floors every two weeks. So going up, and finally we held a meeting. We're on about floor 18 or 19, 20. And I had Mr. Levy, my deputy, build two things, in wood: the outside wall as I conceived it, and then we put tables back, and it was clear that you couldn't see out unless you looked straight ahead. So -- And I thought: Well, okay, that settles that. And we'd have to spend $2 million, incidentally, to change the design and the steel and everything that went with it. So I went back to my office and I waited, and the light went on, and I went up to Austin Tobin's office, and he said, "Guy, we can't change the design." I said, "But Austin, it's a quarter of a mile in the sky. No one can see the difference in width, etc. on the windows. Impossible." I said, "I demonstrated that to you today." He said, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Yamasaki just called me again. He said, if you change the design, he quits." Uh-oh. I said, "That's bad."

So I went back down to my office and I'm steaming in some respects, and I said, "Well, we can't let this happen, because we will be the laughingstock of the world. We're going to have an observation deck but you can't look out if you look to the side. And we're going to have a great restaurant but you can't look out except straight ahead." And so I asked Levy, I said, "Listen, Mal. When is the last time when I can make the decision?" He said floor 63. So I fumed and fretted, and I drew some pictures and simulated from the ground what it looked like a quarter of a mile in the sky.

And then at 4:50 I made up my mind and I went to Austin Tobin's office. I said, "Austin, I'm sorry I have to tell you this, but I've been thinking since we had that meeting. It would be absolute stupidity to build a building the way we're talking about on the 107th floor, each one, because it really doesn't mean anything, that width, as far as the architecture is concerned." And I said, "So I've made up my mind. If you don't change, I quit." And he said, "But Guy, you can't do that." I said, "Yes, I can," because I said that -- "It's just wrong to do what we're doing." And I said, "And by the way, Mr. Yamasaki just had his picture on the cover of Time magazine for having built the two greatest towers in the world." And I said, "I don't think he'll quit the job. But you know, you have to make up your own mind." I went back down to my office. He -- Austin said, "Well, give me a day. I'll have to think about it, talk to some of the board members."

And the next day he said, "Guy, you're correct. So we will change the design. We'll tell Mr. Yamasaki to do that." And two things happened. One, he didn't quit, as I didn't think he would. And number two, at the opening night for Windows on the World, we're having a party, and there were tables back from the windows about 45-50 feet, up in the Windows on the World restaurant. And Yamasaki was sitting up there, and he called me over and I bent down. He said, "You know, Guy, you were right." But I knew that he was still very upset.

So he wrote a book about the architecture of the Trade Center, and I was mentioned one time in the book. It said Guy Tozzoli helped get city approval of this project, period. That was it. So I think that's a good description of our relationship. We respected one another, but he didn't like me to tell him what to do.

The observation deck and Windows on the World were the two things, in my judgment, that turned the city of New York from looking at the Trade Center as some monster downtown to something that was theirs. They began to adopt it. And it was great. I mean, I just -- The greatest joy for me was to watch the foreign visitors come through the lobbies, you know, looking up at Yama's lobbies, which... 73 feet high and those beautiful Venetian chandeliers up there with different colors and -- It was just a fabulous place.