Twin Towers tightrope walker recalls daring feat 50 years later: ‘Artistic crime of the century’

Shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1974, French performance artist Philippe Petit stepped out from the roof of the World Trade Center’s South Tower and onto a one-inch thick cable, stretching 140 feet across to the North Tower.

With no safety net or harness, all he had was a balancing pole for company – and a drop of 1,360-feet and certain death below him should he make one wrong step.

“I was a little anxious on that first crossing because we never checked how strong the anchor point was on the other side,” Petit tells The Post. “It wasn’t great, to be honest, but it was good enough.”

Audacious, dangerous and entirely illegal, Petit’s wire walk was called the ‘artistic crime of the century’ and was years in the planning. Using covert surveillance and endless subterfuge, Petit managed to smuggle a huge amount of equipment up the 110 floors of the South Tower before his friend and collaborator, Jean-Louis Blondeau, fired a cable across to the North Tower using a bow and arrow.

He even chartered a helicopter so he could take aerial photographs of the rooftops of the Twin Towers.

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Petit spent 45 minutes walking the wire, making eight crossings. At one point he danced on it; he even laid down on it.

When it was over, Petit was immediately arrested.

He was released without charge on the condition he perform a free show for children in Central Park.

A lot has happened since that Wednesday morning 50 years ago, not least of which was the destruction of the Twin Towers in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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On the morning of the attacks, Petit, who has never owned a television, was called into his neighbor’s house in the Catskills to watch the horror unfolding. “They said, ‘Your towers are being destroyed.’

“But all I could think about was the thousands of human lives, not the architectural devastation,” he recalled.

He also found himself in the Guinness Book of World Records, much to his annoyance.

“My art cannot be defined by numbers or records but the irony is I unwittingly found myself in it whether I liked it or not,” he said. “I never I wanted to be in it alongside people who can eat 10 pizzas in a minute.”

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On Aug.7-8, Petit will recreate his iconic walk inside the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue in his new show, “Towering!” Featuring a range of other performers, his friend Sting perform a world exclusive of a new song written especially for Petit.

“It will be the most beautiful, most elaborate and the most powerful show of my life,” says the 74-year-old. “It will be profound.”

The show is also an opportunity to redress some of the many misconceptions people have about Petit’s work, especially in the United States.

“Here in America I am called a daredevil or a stuntman, like I’m Evel Knievel on a motorbike or Harry Houdini, but nothing could be further from the truth. My art is not death-defying, it is life-affirming.

“I want to inspire people and to believe they can move mountains. I want them to look up without fear.

“I am a poet in the sky.”

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