Responding to "Structural Integrity"

The Citicorp building needed to accommodate for a Lutheran church that sat at one of the corners where they wanted to build the skyscraper. While they got the go-ahead to build the structure they had to follow some of the conditions that the church made. The conditions were that the company build the church a new building on that corner, and the skyscraper could only be built around it and use the airspace above it. The corner had to be left for the church. This is the reason the columns of the building were not at the corners because then it would interfere with the corner where the church was. So, instead they put the columns at the midpoints of each side.

While the builders and LeMessurier came up with many great architectural solutions for the unique design to work, there was one flaw they missed that could make the entire structure collapse. A student named Diane Hartley from a school in New Jersey was given this building to study for a thesis. When studying it, some of her math didn't seem to be adding up with the math that had already been done for the building. She brought that to the attention of some of the architects, and they found that if a strong enough wind hit the building at it's corners (a place that is typically the strongest point for normal buildings) it could fall down and create a lot of severe damage. The way the building is propped up on the stilts and how they chose to put the structure together with bolts instead of welding made it very vulnerable.

The reason it never became public was because the New York Times was on strike, along with many other new papers causing a "press blackout". Eventually, 20 years later, the story did arise again and was published in a news paper. When the story came out LeMessurier claimed that it was a male college student. However, upon investigation, they found out that is was Hartley that had asked the right questions and brought it to attention, but that it was most likely was a male architect that was working on the building that brought it to LeMessurier's attention. LeMessurier now openly talks about this flaw and how it was fixed. He is seen as a hero in the sense that he was willing to take the time to listen to what a college student had to say (even if they later realized it was not who they thought it was), fix the mistake, and be humble enough to admit he made the mistake. Hartley doesn't feel like she deserves much credit, but LeMessurier would have to disagree.