Great Miscalculation

The Citicorp Center, a fifty-nine-story skyscraper completed in 1977, quickly became one of the most recognizable buildings on the New York City skyline, thanks to its slanted roof and its oddly placed support columns. Its designer, the structural engineer William LeMessurier, was one of the leading figures in his field, and the tower was the crown jewel of his career. In effect, he had built a skyscraper on stilts.

The building was hailed as a modern marvel until it emerged that it carried a 1 in 16 chance of collapse. Michael M. Greenburg tells the story of how LeMessurier discovered a fatal flaw in his own design and chose to blow the whistle on himself, risking his reputation in a race to save the tower.

Time was short, since hurricane season was approaching and the structural weakness posed a real danger. The economic hardship and political turmoil of 1970s New York made the task harder still, because a massively expensive and unprecedented structural fix had to be carried out in the middle of downtown Manhattan.

The book presents this overlooked piece of New York history as the story of a catastrophe that was averted just in time.