WTC tower's holiday colors lift spirits

Dressed in festive, warm colors of blue, pink and red to shades of green, yellow and lavender, the World Trade Center tower is all aglow -- lifting spirits in lower Manhattan.

"It's beautiful. The lights feel kind and warm and gentle," said Inma Maseda, 37, a Battery Park City resident who was with her children in the neighborhood sandlot just blocks away.

"It's a Christmas tree tower among all these skyscrapers," she said, smiling.

"It makes me feel happy. . . . So many colors. . . . So pretty. Christmas is coming," said a smiling Sylvana Paredes, 44, of Jackson Heights, who was also in the park.

For several weeks, electrical workers wiring the World Trade Center's core and shell have been working on their own time. They have been wrapping colorful cellophane around the building's temporary light fixtures.

The crew started from the ground up, reaching the 65th floor this week. They plan to wrap the building to the 90th floor.

"It's a team effort," said Peter Amadile Jr., senior vice president of Five Star Electric of Ozone Park.

"The guys wanted to cheer up the job site and spread good will. We've got a lot of volunteers and guys using hundreds of cellophane rolls to wrap each light," he said.

Even the World Trade Center construction elevator, which is on the east side of the tower, is decorated in red and white.

Amadile said the electrical crew started wrapping the light fixtures last year. "But no one noticed because the building was so low," he said.

He said the crews plan to keep up the holiday ritual until the building is completed in 2013.

For this year, the 90th floor can be seen from all five boroughs, and New Jersey. There are 14 floors remaining to be built, according to the Port Authority's website.

Once the new World Trade Center is complete, the antenna tower will top it off at 1,776 feet. That will make the building the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.