Structural Integrity

The reason that Citicorp could not build on the corners of the plot of land is because there was a church, called St. Peter's Lutheran Church, that they had to accommodate for on that land with it. The idea was to build two massive nine story stilts so that the Citicorp building would go over the church. The main structural engineer on the project even went as far to call the building "crummy" and "old." The way the church was positioned made it impossible to put the stilts on the corners, so they had to go in the middle. The Citicorp building's big flaw was it was not structurally sound if a strong quartering wind were to come in. A quartering wind is a wind that strikes the building at a corner. Is a strong wind were to come in and hit the building the right way there would be a strong chance of the building falling. Originally Joe Morganstern overheard the story of the Citicorp Building crisis being told at a party. He tracked down William LeMessurier and interviewed him. Later on he published a articel on this in 1955 and made the problem a public issue. The person who was the first one to become aware of the problem was an architect writing her thesis at the time on the Citicorp building. She had called LeMessurier about the situation and until she saw a documentary on BBC she had no idea steps were taken to correct this problem. Her name is Diane Hartley.