The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City's Citicorp Tower
Jun 2025 · NYU Press
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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.
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.
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 Yor...
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About the author
Michael M. Greenburg is a practicing attorney and former member and former editor of the Pepperdine Law Review. He is the author of This Noble Woman, Myrtilla Miner and her Fight to Establish a School for African American Girls in the Slaveholding South, The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of Liberty & America’s Forgotten Military Disaster, The Mad Bomber of New York: The Extraordinary True Story of the Manhunt that Paralyzed a City, Peaches and Daddy: A Story of the Roaring 20’s, the Birth of Tabloid Media, and the Courtship that Captured the Heart and Imagination of the American Public, and The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City's Citicorp Tower.
Michael M. Greenburg is a practicing attorney and former member and former editor of the Pepperdine Law Review. He is the author of This Noble Woman, Myrtilla Miner and her Fight to Establish a School for African American Girls in the Slaveholding South, The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of...
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