Doingtherightthing
- 1. You've taken on a design challenge and come up with a solution that's been widely admired and won you awards. But a year or so later, you realize there was a mistake. There's something horribly wrong with your design. And it's not just something cosmetic — a badly resolved corner etc. — but a fundamental flaw that will almost certainly lead to catastrophic failure. And that failure will result not just in embarrassment, or professional ruin, but death, the death of thousands of people. You are the only person that knows that something's wrong. What would you do?
- 2. Doing the Right T hing The Citicorp Center Case William LeMessurier
- 3. This sounds like a hypothetical question. But it's not. It's the question that structural engineer William LeMessurier faced on a lonely July weekend about 30 years ago.
- 4. Citicorp Center in New York with its distinctive forty-five degree diagonal crown, the Citicorp building is one of the most recognizable skyscrapers on the New York City skyline. With fifty- nine stories, it's the third tallest building in midtown Manhattan, and at the time of its completion it was the seventh-tallest building in the world. At ground level, the huge skyscraper almost seems to hover above Lexington Avenue, held aloft by four massive, 114- foot-tall stilts which are located at the center of each side rather than on the corners. This unusual architecture was one of necessity– the structure had to be built around the landmark St. Peter's Church– but the design left room for a serious engineering flaw which went completely unnoticed during its construction and initial use. Had the weakness not been accidentally discovered and secretly fixed, the mighty skyscraper could have been collapsed by a hard blast of air of wind without any warning.
- 6. The building's structural skeleton was designed by an engineer named William J. LeMessurier (pronounced "La Measure") in the early 1970s. Making room for the St. Peter's church was a difficult problem, but LeMessurier was a highly capable and creative engineer. His design called for the building to sit atop nine-story- tall stilts, one centered on each side with a specific geometry in the structure's framing to take maximum advantage of the oddly placed support columns. It also had a single, narrower column in the center which housed the building's elevator banks and provided additional strength to the framing. This design made room for the church under the building's northwest corner, and gave the giant structure a graceful, almost levitating effect.
- 9. LeMessurier first became aware of the building's weakness in 1978, about a year after its completion. An engineering student contacted him to ask some technical questions about the design, which he was delighted to address. The student's professor had expressed doubts regarding the strength of a stilted skyscraper where the support columns were not on the corners. "Listen, I want you to tell your teacher that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about," LeMessurier told the student, "because he doesn't know the problem that had to be solved." He went on to explain how the building's framing geometry worked perfectly with the stilts in such positions, allowing it to withstand very forceful winds, even from a diagonal angle. But the conversation got him thinking, and he started doing some calculations on just how much diagonal wind the structure could withstand. He was particularly interested in the effects of an engineering change made during construction which had seemed caring at the time: numerous joints were secured with bolts rather than welds. Normally such a change was acceptable, but the Citicorp Center's design was unusually sensitive to diagonal winds, which the builders hadn't realized. The results of his calculations were troubling.
- 11. He took his calculations to fellow engineer Alan Davenport, who was an expert on the behavior of buildings in high-wind conditions. Davenport found that seventy-mile-per-hour gusts would be sufficient to break the bolts holding the joints, resulting in structural failure. Such winds were not unknown in New York, indeed storms with such strength occurred about once every sixteen years on average. Hurricane season was fast approaching, and now only two men in the world knew that Citicorp's new $175 million tower and its occupants were vulnerable to destruction by catastrophic collapse.
- 13. Horrified, LeMessurier fled to his island hideaway on Sebago Lake to refine the findings and consider his options. Because he faced possible litigation, bankruptcy, and professional disgrace he contemplated suicide, but he was struck with the realization that he held the information to initiate extraordinary events which could save thousands of lives. The following day he started making phone calls. After speaking with corporate lawyers and consulting with Leslie Robertson– an engineer who helped design the World Trade Center– LeMessurier went to Cambridge to inform Hugh Stubbins, Jr., the building's architect. Stubbins winced when he heard the news.
- 15. Together they flew to New York City to confront the executive officers of Citicorp with the dilemma. "I have a real problem for you, sir," LeMessurier said to Citicorp's executive vice-president, John S. Reed. The two men outlined the design flaw and described their proposed solution: to systematically reinforce all 200+ bolted joints by welding two- inch-thick steel plates over them. Work began immediately, and continued around the clock for three months. Welders worked all night, and carpenters labored during the day. In case of imminent disaster, an evacuation plan was put in place for the surrounding area, but the general public knew nothing of the circumstances… the press was on strike at that time, so news of the repairs did not disseminate to the populace. About halfway into the repairs Hurricane Ella formed, and it appeared to be on a collision course with Manhattan, but fortunately the storm veered out to sea rather than testing the limits of the half-repaired building. The reinforcements were completed in September of 1978, and the entire structure was re- evaluated for safety. Following the repairs, the building was found to be one of the most sturdy skyscrapers in the world. Despite the success, the crisis was kept hidden from the public for almost twenty years, until an article appeared in the New Yorker in 1995.
- 17. As for LeMessurier, the executives at Citicorp asked no more than the $2 million his insurance policy covered, despite the fact that the repairs alone cost over $8 million. It is generally thought that his honesty so impressed the executives that they decided to keep their lawyers at bay. It is clear that it takes a lot of character to admit one's own mistakes, but in accepting responsibility for this flaw and then leading the repair effort, the character shown by William J. LeMessurier was nothing short of heroic.
- 18. Citicorp Center standing over St. Peter's church
- 19. The story of William LeMessurier and Citicorp Center was first told in a brilliant New Yorker article by Joe Morgenstern in 1995, "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis."