Developed by restaurateur Joe Baum and designed initially by Warren Platner, Windows on the World occupied 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) of space in the North Tower.

[3] All of the staff members who were present in the restaurant on the day of the attacks perished; the plane's impact severed all means of escape from the 92nd floor up.

Windows on the World closed after the 1993 bombing, in which employee Wilfredo Mercado was killed while checking in deliveries in the building's underground garage.

[11] On May 12, 1994, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that the Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Company had won the contract to run the restaurants after Windows's former operator, Inhilco, gave up its lease.

While the restaurant was hosting regular breakfast patrons and the Risk Waters Financial Technology Congress, Egyptian terrorist Mohamed Atta and four other Al-Qaeda hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower between floors 93 and 99 at 8:46 a.m.[18] Everyone present in the restaurant died that day, as all means of escape (including the stairwells and elevators leading down from the impact zones) were instantly severed by the impact.

Victims trapped in Windows on the World either died from smoke inhalation from the ensuing fire, jumping or falling to their deaths from the restaurant, or being killed in the eventual collapse of the North Tower.

The last people to leave the restaurant before Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. were Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson, Geoffrey Wharton, and Richard Tierney, who all shared an elevator together.

He stated, "Windows helped usher in a new era of captive audience dining in that the restaurant was a destination in itself, rather than a lazy byproduct of the vital institution it resided in.

[31] In March 2005, the novel Windows on the World, by French novelist Frédéric Beigbeder, was released; the novel focuses on two brothers who are in the restaurant on September 11 with their father.

[33] In 2021 young adult novelist Alan Gratz published a book called Ground Zero about a boy named Brandon who is with his father in Windows on the World on the morning of September 11, 2001.