In NYC this had a 1 in 16 chance of happing and storm season was approaching. The issue was that the connections between diagonal members and the corner members of the building were changed from welding to bolts while under construction. By this time, it was late July and hurricane season was approaching. In what proved to be extremely fortunate, Stubbins had resisted this offer. Within the past year more homes in California have been destroyed by fire in any other year in history that I can recall. Please see our Privacy Policy The inquiry by Diane Hartley triggered a recheck of the calculations and discovery of a potentially catostrophic failure of the bolted connections in a 70 mph plus wind. LeMessurier recalled that “everybody was sweating blood” as the hurricane approached. The added intrigue was that the tenants were not told of the potential danger nor the character of the repairs. Speaking as one who actually worked there (for three years I worked as a consultant out of 399 Park Ave. North, right across the street) the loss of life would not be that heavy. Since the story became public in 1995, opinions relating to LeMessurier’s ethical conduct have been generally positive. Despite their publicly calm approach, the team did develop a response plan in the event of a wind alert in conjunction with the mayor’s Office of Emergency Management. From hunters and military members, to competition shooters and general firearm enthusiasts, we welcome anyone who values and respects the way of the firearm. To avoid St. Peter’s Church at the corner of the site, LeMessurier placed four nine-storey high structural columns at the centre of each face rather than at each corner. This makes the story all the more remarkable and maybe even a miracle. A band-aid solution in the truest sense! Engineering Journalism. for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent. I hope that someone recorded it. When it was built in 1977, Citicorp Center (later renamed Citigroup Center, now called 601 Lexington) was, at 59 stories, the seventh-tallest building in the world. What he discovered was both surprising and chilling, and set in motion a series of events that were kept secret for almost twenty years. (1995, May 29). It all started in June 1978, with a phone call from an engineering student to William LeMessurier. His following realisation would send shivers down the spine of any structural engineer: it would only take a one in sixteen-year storm to topple over his structural masterpiece, a far-cry from the one in five-hundred-year event it was supposed to be designed for. Citicorp Center Tower: failure averted. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. This was suggested by the contractor to save money and recalculated by Mr. LeMessurier's office. Just over a month later, the welding was completed and the building was now strong enough to withstand a one in seven-hundred-year storm. After the the completion of the building a Princeton engineering student, named Diane Hartley, chose the CitiCorp Building to write her thesis on. These are winds that travel diagonally against the building pushing against two faces at the same time. There was a documentary about the Citicorp building and its structural flaws. JavaScript is disabled. The Citicorp Building in NYC, now called the Citigroup Center, is one of those. In this video, Dr. Michael Loui summarizes the highlights of the case, including the fact that: The design flaw was revealed by a Princeton University engineering student who was analyzing the… LeMessurier, also an adjunct professor at Harvard and MIT, decided that this concern would form the basis for an interesting lecture for his engineering students. During the conceptual design of the building, LeMessurier had tried to convince Stubbins to express the structural beauty of the braces on the exterior of the building. Retrieved February 17, 2017, from Cross Currents, http://www.crosscurrents.org/kremer2002.htm. The Citicorp Center (actually 601 Lexington Avenue) is one of the tallest buildings in NYC and the first in USA to use a tuned mass damper system. A minor legal tussle ensued in which LeMessurier offered Citicorp US$2 million, which was the value of his insurance policy. The cost of the site for this building came to $40 million, making it Manhattan’s most expensive real estate, and there was one holdout at that: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, which refused to sell its building. You can cancel anytime. As an architectural work the building has little to … The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis. As the story was later told by Mr. LeMessurier, he was called by a young man that was an engineering student who revealed to him the error of the calculations. With her evaluation of the materials she was given she asked about the building being evaluated for quarterly winds. Meanwhile the city put in place an emergency evacuation plan with the RedCross in case there was an imminent threat of 70 mph winds. California Fires: Steps to take when your home destroyed by the fire? Location: 153 East 53rd Street, Manhattan, 10022, United States, Cost: $195 million (USD)(in adjusted inflation $758,904,448), Height: Architectura l915 ft (279 m) Floor count 59, ArchitectHugh Stubbins / KlingStubbins, Emery Roth & Sons, Structural engineer: Le Messurier Consultants, James Ruderman. As LeMessurier reported years after the event, “that was very low, awesomely low.”.
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