WTC 7 BUILT LIKE A BRICK OUTHOUSE

Or better, actually. Here's a quote from the Mark McCain article "COMMERCIAL PROPERTY: The Salomon Solution; A Building Within a Building, at a Cost of $200 Million" from the NY Times of February 19, 1989 (thanks to Vyzygoth):

After studying more than 50 options throughout the New York region, Salomon signed a 20-year lease for 22 floors - each spanning nearly an acre - at Seven World Trade Center, an office tower that has been largely vacant since Silverstein Properties completed it two years ago.

"We really had a time constraint," explained Gedale B. Horowitz, a senior executive director of Salomon. "And we were driven very much by technology. We had to find a building that could accommodate our needs, including major-sized trading floors."
Much of the new electrical, air-conditioning and mechanical equipment will serve three double-height trading floors. To create the extra height, workers are removing most of three existing floors, using jackhammers to demolish concrete slabs and torches to remove steel decking and girders beneath the concrete. . .

In some office buildings, that alteration would be impossible, but Silverstein Properties tried to second-guess the needs of potential tenants when it designed Seven World Trade Center as a speculative project.

"We built in enough redundancy to allow entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors," said Larry Silverstein, president of the company.

"Sure enough, Salomon had that need.

"And there were many other ways that we designed as much adaptability as possible into the building because we knew that flexible layout is important to large space users."

Nearly 2,000 people will be working on the retrofit project during the peak period. The cost, which is estimated at $200 million - not including carpeting, furniture and other office equipment - will come out of Salomon's pocket.

"We made a landlord contribution to the work," Mr. Silverstein said, "but Salomon's costs will go well beyond that contribution by many, many times."

More than 375 tons of steel - requiring 12 miles of welding - will be installed to reinforce floors for Salomon's extra equipment. Sections of the existing stone facade and steel bracing will be temporarily removed so that workers using a roof crane can hoist nine diesel generators onto the tower's fifth floor, where they will become the core of a back-up power station.

Yep. Definitely fire. Or seismic shock. Or structural damage. Or all of the above.

P.S. Here's George Monbiot from his February 6 slam at "Loose Change":

Counterpunch, the radical leftwing magazine, commissioned its own expert - an aerospace and mechanical engineer - to test the official findings. He shows that the institute must have been right. He also demonstrates how Building 7 collapsed. Burning debris falling from the twin towers ruptured the oil pipes feeding its emergency generators. The reduction in pressure triggered the automatic pumping system, which poured thousands of gallons of diesel on to the fire. The support trusses weakened and buckled, and the building imploded. Popular Mechanics magazine polled 300 experts and came to the same conclusions.

Uh, it would be structural damage and fire, then? Okay, George.