NYC's new One World Trade Center dominates the skyline — but I went inside and it didn't look like the bland, traditional office building I was expecting

one world trade center nyc Katie Warren/Business Insider

New York City's new One World Trade Center cost $4 billion and took eight years to build.
I took a tour to see what the inside looks like four years after the first tenants moved in.
In addition to 78 floors of office spaces with jaw-dropping views, the building has an employee amenities floor with a café, game room with video game consoles and shuffleboard and billiards tables.
About 8,000 people work in the building, mainly for media and tech companies.

New York City's new One World Trade Center, nicknamed the "Freedom Tower," cost $4 billion and took eight years to build between the start of construction in 2006 and the first tenants moving in 2014.

Four years after opening its doors to the first tenants, about 8,000 people now work in the building for companies that include Condé Nast, streaming service DAZN, and workout app Aaptiv.

The building is 1,776 feet and 104 stories tall, with office space on floors 20 through 98. It includes 3 million square feet of rentable office space, according to the World Trade Center's official website.

I found the inside to be much more casual than I expected — and my tour guide, Jordan Barowitz, Vice President of Public Affairs for the Durst Organization, which oversees leasing in the building, backed up this observation.

He told me when they first started marketing the building's office spaces in 2010, they thought it would be a "formal office building" with lots of "guys in suits." Instead, they got mainly smaller companies in media, technology, and other creative industries. While I certainly noticed some guys in suits, the majority of employees I saw were dressed casually, many with beards and sneakers.

Here's what the inside of One World Trade Center looks like, four years after the first tenants moved in.