and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners The Structural Engineer, pp. The response was an immediate action to weld those connections at night when the offices were closed. 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. 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. 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. But after considering the dynamic response of the building, they reported slightly increased wind pressures! The Citigroup Center (formerly Citicorp Center and also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue) is an office skyscraper in New York City, located at 53rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues in midtown Manhattan.Built in 1977 to house the headquarters of Citibank, it is 915 feet (279 m) tall and has 59 floors with 1.3 million square feet (120,000 m 2) of office space. 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. steel, Categories: However, before they had to make the decision to put the evacuations in motion, the storm veered from its heading and began moving back out to sea. 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. to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app He travelled to Canada to request more thorough testing of the building in the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel at the University of Western Ontario. Please see our Privacy Policy It may not display this or other websites correctly. LeMessurier recalled that “everybody was sweating blood” as the hurricane approached. At an ethical crossroads, the team decided it would be best not to alert the public to the fatal flaw in the structure due to the disproportionate amount of panic that would ensue and instead issued a vague press-release detailing minor maintenance and strengthening works over the coming month. Subscribe to our monthly Newsletter to receive firearm news, product discounts from your favorite Industry Partners, and more. She never learned more about her inquiry or what resulted because of it until she watched the documentary linked below and a meet up with her old professor. In what proved to be extremely fortunate, Stubbins had resisted this offer. to personalize content and perform site analytics. It all started in June 1978, with a phone call from an engineering student to William LeMessurier. It was called Fatal Flaw: A skyscrapers nightmare. The fifty-nine-storey skyscraper they were strengthening was supposed to be a marvel of structural engineering but instead was poised to be one of the greatest engineering disasters of all time. After the the completion of the building a Princeton engineering student, named Diane Hartley, chose the CitiCorp Building to write her thesis on. The Red Cross estimated that the number of people that may have to be evacuated would be almost 200,000. These are winds that travel diagonally against the building pushing against two faces at the same time. There is a lot to learn from engineering disasters of the past; problems with technical theories can be highlighted and poor engineering practice exposed. Open a bank account from Citi checking and savings accounts and CDs, to banking IRAs. High above Manhattan, a team of structural welders were secretly working through the night strengthening connections in a race against time. LeMessurier stated that the most critical joints had already been fixed and that backup power had been provided to the tuned mass damper, meaning that the building could now resist a one in two-hundred-year storm. You are using an out of date browser. But it’s the base of the building that really makes the tower so When LeMessurier ran his calculations on the quartering winds he found that, in half of the chevrons, the force from wind loading had increased by 40%. Even at peak traffic hours (roughly 9 AM and 5 PM) there aren't more than fifty thousand people in the area, most of whom would probably escape serious harm. By this time, it was late July and hurricane season was approaching. Contact sv@wwa.com Due to a requirement by the sellers of the property, St. Peter's Lutheran Church, a new church building was required to be built along side the new tower. It is not available on video. Still watching, not sure how it was fixed yet'. LeMessurier reassured the student and pointed out that, in his opinion, the columns were ideally placed to resist quartering winds (wind striking the building diagonally at its corners). The New Yorker, pp. LeMessurier began looking for anything he could use to justify the building’s integrity. JavaScript is disabled. to Slate’s Terms of Service Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. There was a documentary about the Citicorp building and its structural flaws. The structural engineer was the foremost William LeMessurier. A band-aid solution in the truest sense! This scheme, in conjunction with an inverted steel chevron bracing system, cantilevered the corners of the 280 metre tall steel structure, 22 m out over the church. Tags: The function of the steel bracing system was not only to provide lateral stability, it also supported half of the vertical load of the structure. Hurricane season was fast approaching and even a modest storm could put the lives of up to 200,000 people at risk. Brady, S. (2014, February). Even though the basis of this near engineering disaster was technical in nature, the most important conclusion from the events at the Citicorp Centre is the triumph of ethical engineering. Since the story became public in 1995, opinions relating to LeMessurier’s ethical conduct have been generally positive. Only a few weeks after the commencement of works, the weather services reported the news that everybody had been dreading, Hurricane Ella was heading for New York. 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. But it’s the base of the building that really makes the tower so unique. (Re)examining the Citicorp case: Ethical paragon or chimera. The Citicorp Building in NYC, now called the Citigroup Center, is one of those. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Citibank agreed to pay the church $9 million and to build them a new building as part of its development. In the original structural design of the steel braces, only perpendicular winds were considered, as this was all that was required by New York City’s building code at the time. Any leads would be appreciated. California Fires: Steps to take when your home destroyed by the fire? With her evaluation of the materials she was given she asked about the building being evaluated for quarterly winds. forensic engineering, LeMessurier was the structural engineer behind the uniquely designed Citicorp Centre Tower, which at its completion in 1977 carried the title of seventh tallest building in the world.

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