The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City's Citicorp Tower

by Michael M. Greenburg, Mitch Crawford (Narrator)

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 one in sixteen 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.

Audible Audio

Published June 3, 2025

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was skeptical how much I would be into this subject, but Michael Greenburg makes the esoteric engineering topics very engaging (this is about the print version). The writing is clear and moves you along in a logical and interesting progression. Essentially, the building was constructed with a hidden time bomb when bolts were substituted for welds in key joints, giving it a 1 in 16 chance of collapsing under high winds. The gaping omission that kept me from rating this higher was the complete lack of any photos or diagrams showing even the appearance of the building, much less the construction details. Worse, there are no diagrams showing the stress loads being talked about and where the problem lay. The only diagram is a simple one showing quartering vs. perpendicular winds. I had to look up another source to get any idea of what this looked like. Diagrams are essential to a book about a complex topic like this and their omission really hurts understanding of the issues.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an exceptional retelling of the tale of the Manhattan skyscraper that could have been the most spectacularly horrendous structural fail in history. Greenburgh's account is balanced, clear-eyed, and well-written. Also, I really appreciated the list of historic structural failures and was able to look up many of them on YouTube. I came away with a deep appreciation for structural and civil engineers.