---
title: "Citicorp Center engineering crisis"
chunk: 3/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:37.754740+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Repairs ==
LeMessurier agonized over how to deal with the problem. If the issues were made known to the public, he risked ruining his professional reputation and causing panic in the immediate area surrounding the building and the occupants. LeMessurier considered never bringing the issue up, and he also briefly contemplated committing suicide before anyone else found out about the defect. LeMessurier ultimately contacted Stubbins's lawyer and insurance carrier. LeMessurier then contacted Citicorp's lawyers, the latter of which hired Leslie E. Robertson as an expert adviser. Citicorp accepted LeMessurier's proposal to weld steel plates over the bolted joints, and Karl Koch Erecting was hired for the welding process. Very few people were made aware of the issue, besides Citicorp leadership, mayor Ed Koch, acting buildings commissioner Irving E. Minkin, and the head of the welder's union.
Construction crews started installing the welded panels at night in August 1978. Officials made no public mention of any possible structural issues, and the city's three major newspapers had gone on strike. Officials barely acknowledged the issue, instead describing the work as a routine procedure. Henry DeFord III of Citicorp claimed the Citicorp Center could withstand a 100-year wind and that there were no "noticeable problems in the building at all".  As precautions, emergency generators were installed for the mass damper, strain gauges were placed on critical beams and weather forecasters were engaged. Citicorp and local officials created emergency evacuation plans for the immediate neighborhood. However, these evacuation plans were not publicized at the time, although thousands of people could have been killed in a potential collapse. Six weeks into the work, a major storm (Hurricane Ella) was off Cape Hatteras and heading for New York. The reinforcement was only half-finished, with New York City hours away from emergency evacuation, but at that point the backup generators were in place and the mass damper was being continually monitored by special staff, and enough of the bracing had been completed that the tower was estimated to be able to survive a 200-year storm. Ella eventually turned eastward and veered out to sea. The weather watch ended on September 13.
Repairs were completed in October 1978, and most of the newspapers remained out of production for weeks after it was completed. LeMessurier claimed a wind strong enough to topple the repaired building would occur only once every 700 years. Stubbins and LeMessurier's insurance carrier covered all of the repair costs, estimated to be several million dollars.

== Publication ==
Since no structural failure occurred, the work was not publicized until 1995, when a lengthy article appeared in The New Yorker. The 1995 story in The New Yorker described the student as a "young man, whose name has been lost in the swirl of subsequent events" who called LeMessurier saying "that his professor had assigned him to write a paper on the Citicorp tower". However, it was clear that Diane Hartley had never contacted LeMessurier directly –  she had spoken only to Joel S. Weinstein. According to one second-hand report, when one of LeMessurier's colleagues asked whether the student was female, "LeMessurier responded that he didn't know because he had not actually spoken with the student." However, in a lecture on the subject, LeMessurier himself said he had spoken directly and repeatedly with the student and referred to the student as male. LeMessurier died in 2007 without describing any communication about the interaction between Hartley and Weinstein. 
Hartley identified herself as the probable engineering student in 2011, more than 15 years after the New Yorker article was published. However, another student at a different institution, Lee DeCarolis, identified himself in 2022 as the young man in question. He said he learned in 2011 how he played a part in the Citicorp Building history from reading Einstein's Refrigerator, a 2001 book by the high school teacher and podcaster Steve Silverman. By the time DeCarolis read the book, LeMessurier had died. While DeCarolis had mentioned his role to acquaintances and even written a play about it, he revealed himself to the public at large only after a reassessment by NIST determined that the effect of the wind loads had not been as severe as Hartley and LeMessurier estimated.
The crisis was further detailed in a 2025 book, The Great Miscalculation, by the historian Michael M. Greenburg. In the book, Greenburg wrote that the work had been split up among many individuals, which may have contributed to confusion surrounding the decision to use bolts instead of a welded frame.

== Ethical questions ==
According to a case study by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Trust, "many have viewed the actions of LeMessurier as nearly heroic, and many engineering schools and ethics educators now use LeMessurier's story as an example of how to act ethically." However, others have criticized LeMessurier for his lack of oversight that led to the issues and his lack of honesty toward neighborhood residents, architects, engineers, and other members of the public when the problems were discovered. Architect Eugene Kremer discussed the ethical questions raised in this case in 2002. Kremer listed six key points that he perceived as ethically objectionable: