American Express breaks ground on 2 World Trade Center headquarters

American Express broke ground Thursday on its new global headquarters at 2 World Trade Center, turning the final planned commercial tower on the rebuilt World Trade Center campus into a live construction project. The 55-story building, designed by Foster + Partners and developed by Silverstein Properties on Port Authority-owned land, is expected to open in 2031.

The tower is more than a corporate relocation. It is the last office building planned for the 16-acre campus, which now includes office towers, public space, transit connections and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. American Express will be the sole occupant of the nearly 2 million-square-foot building, which is designed to include more than an acre of outdoor terraces and gardens and to house as many as 10,000 colleagues.

The economics are as much a part of the story as the symbolism. Officials estimate construction will create more than 2,000 union jobs, with about 3,200 total jobs over the life of the project. They also project a $5.9 billion boost to New York City’s economy and a $6.3 billion impact across New York State, figures that underscore why the tower is rising now after years of delay on the last undeveloped parcel.

That delay has been tied to the site’s history. The original 2 World Trade Center was one of the Twin Towers destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, leaving a vast void in Lower Manhattan. The rebuilt campus followed a 2003 master plan by Daniel Libeskind that called for five towers, a memorial and a transit hub, but the project was slowed for years by the unresolved parcel at 130 Liberty Street, the former Deutsche Bank site that remained the campus’s last empty block.

Governor Kathy Hochul said the project marked completion of the final commercial office building at the World Trade Center campus. Mayor Zohran Mamdani cast it as a major union-labor undertaking, while American Express chief executive Stephen J. Squeri framed the headquarters as an investment in the company’s future and its long roots in Lower Manhattan. The tower’s ground-breaking closes a major chapter in the neighborhood’s rebuilding, even as the campus continues to balance commemoration with commercial life.