There was a time when the hottest reservation in New York wasn’t behind a velvet rope but nearly a quarter mile above the city. From the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Windows on the World and its glittering counterpart, The Greatest Bar on Earth, turned cocktails and dinner into theater, the skyline itself the backdrop. When it opened in 1976, conceived by restaurateur Joe Baum and designed by Warren Platner with graphics by "I Love New York" logo designer Milton Glaser, the space was less a restaurant than a cultural statement: New York announcing itself to the world.

The scene was electric, a heady mix of spectacle and exclusivity. Dolly Parton and John Belushi famously showed up after a performance in 1977, and over the years everyone from movie stars to moguls to mayors raised a glass there. Floor-to-ceiling windows transformed every toast into a cinematic moment; the encyclopedic “Cellar in the Sky” wine list became legend, with more than 1,500 selections curated to impress the most discerning oenophiles. For tourists it was an indulgence, for locals proof that their city could outshine Paris or Hong Kong, and for anyone lucky enough to be seated at a corner table, it was an evening that felt both infinite and fleeting. By the late ’90s, under chef Michael Lomonaco, it had grown into one of the highest-grossing restaurants in the world, a place where business deals were struck as easily as marriages proposed.

That brilliance ended on the morning of September 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Everyone at Windows — staff and guests alike — was lost. The space that had embodied glamour became one of the most painful symbols of that day, remembered not only for its view but for the lives inside it. The dining rooms, once filled with laughter, clinking glasses, and the hum of ambition, were silenced in an instant. For many New Yorkers, the absence of Windows on the World was not just architectural but spiritual: the sudden vanishing of a place that had defined the skyline and their own memories of it.

In the years since, one of the most poignant relics of Windows and The Greatest Bar on Earth has been something deceptively small: their matchboxes. Once pocketed and forgotten, slipped into purses, or left to rattle in desk drawers, they are now cherished collectibles, trading hands among collectors and preserved in museums. Fragile by design, they have become tiny monuments, proof that the restaurant existed and that nights of laughter, gossip, and whispered secrets once unfolded above the city lights. They remind us that even the smallest objects can carry the heaviest weight. Windows on the World and The Greatest Bar on Earth no longer crown the skyline, but their legend endures — in stories told, photographs rediscovered, and in those slim cardboard matchbooks that once seemed trivial and now feel profound.

As a fellow phillumenist recalled in the comment section of a WSJ article where OH, WHAT A MATCH! was mentioned on August 6, 2024: “I was on the 107th floor of Tower 100 a couple days before they both came down in September 2001… While in Manhattan, I wanted to go to the coolest bar. I was told it was the greatest bar on Earth and it was on the 107th floor, and WOW was it awesome! Lady Liberty looked half an inch tall and The Brooklyn Bridge about an inch long. Coming down the 2 elevators it took to get there, I saw a large box full of the little wooden cigar matches and took a handful. The match boxes were shaped like the towers — rectangular, and said ‘The Greatest Bar on Earth 107th Floor.’ I thought to myself, I don’t know when I’ll be here again, so I grabbed as many as my hand would hold. My client was there That Day, and did not make it out. October 11, 2001, and then in 2021 on the anniversary, I attended candlelight vigils and lit the first flame with these beauties. Health & peace to all.”