
The Great Miscalculation
The Race to Save New York City's Citicorp Tower
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Distinguished Favorite, 2025 NYC Big Book Award: Nonfiction
How an engineering crisis threatened a career, a building, and the lives of countless New Yorkers
The Citicorp Center, a fifty-nine-story skyscraper built in 1977, immediately became one of the most recognizable features on the New York City skyline with its distinctive inclined roof and oddly placed support columns. Designed by one of the top structural engineers in the field, William LeMessurier, the tower would become the crown jewel of his professional career; In essence, he created a skyscraper on stilts. The building was a modern marvel â until it was revealed that it had a 1 in 16 chance of collapse.
The Great Miscalculation tells the riveting story of LeMessurier's discovery of a fatal flaw in his building's design and his decision to blow the whistle on himself, putting his reputation on the line in a race to save this iconic skyscraper. With hurricane season rapidly approaching, the structural design flaws of the Citicorp Tower posed a menacing danger. Meanwhile, the economic hardships and political turmoil of 1970s New York only compounded the obstacles to a massively expensive, never-before-seen structural redesign in the heart of downtown Manhattan.
A fascinating piece of overlooked New York City history, The Great Miscalculation tells the gripping narrative of a catastrophe averted in the nick of time.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Prologue: âAnchor of Serenityâ
- 1 A Skyscraper on Stilts
- 2 âScary Excitementâ
- 3 âA Skyscraper for the Peopleâ
- 4 Diane Hartley
- 5 The Mystery Student
- 6 âSome Very Peculiar Behaviorâ
- 7 âVertical Urbanismâ
- 8 One in Sixteen
- 9 âA Catalogue of Failuresâ
- 10 âA Serious and Deadly Matterâ: Monday, July 31
- 11 Revelations
- 12 Mobilization
- 13 âAngel of the Battlefieldâ: Monday, August 7
- 14 âWhite Liesâ: Tuesday, August 8
- 15 âA Thousand-Year Windâ
- 16 Safety, Secrecy, and Surveillance
- 17 A Critical Analysis
- 18 Ella
- 19 âEvents Nobody Envisionedâ
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author