The Great Miscalculation

The Race to Save New York City's Citicorp Tower

Michael M. Greenburg

• Publisher: Washington Mews Books/NYU Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781479829972
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479829996
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Architecture General
• Index: History

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 – 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: “Anchor of Serenity”
• 1 A Skyscraper on Stilts
• 2 “Scary Excitement”
• 3 “A Skyscraper for the People”
• 4 Diane Hartley
• 5 The Mystery Student
• 6 “Some Very Peculiar Behavior”
• 7 “Vertical Urbanism”
• 8 One in Sixteen
• 9 “A Catalogue of Failures”
• 10 “A Serious and Deadly Matter”: Monday, July 31
• 11 Revelations
• 12 Mobilization
• 13 “Angel of the Battlefield”: Monday, August 7
• 14 “White Lies”: Tuesday, August 8
• 15 “A Thousand-Year Wind”
• 16 Safety, Secrecy, and Surveillance
• 17 A Critical Analysis
• 18 Ella
• 19 “Events Nobody Envisioned”
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author