William LeMessurier:
The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis: A Lesson in Professional Behavior
William LeMessurier, one of the nation's most distinguished structural engineers, served as design and construction consultant on the innovative Citicorp headquarters tower, which was completed in 1977 in New York. The next year, after a college student studying the tower design had called him to point out a possible deficiency, LeMessurier discovered that the building was indeed structurally deficient. LeMessurier faced a complex and difficult problem of professional responsibility in which he had to alert a broad group of people to the structural deficiency and enlist their cooperation in repairing the deficiency before a hurricane brought the building down.
His story was recounted in detail in "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis," which appeared in the May 29, 1995 issue of The New Yorker, and on November 17, 1995, LeMessurier himself came to MIT, from which he received his doctorate, to speak to prospective engineers about the decisions he had to make and the actions he took.
| William LeMessurier, one of the nation's most distinguished structural engineers, discusses ethical dilemmas he faced with structural deficiencies in the design of the Citicorp headquarters.
See video clip: QuickTime 1.5 Mb MPEG 1.5 Mb Click here for download instructions |
The Story of the Citicorp Tower
- Part 1: History of Skyscrapers
- Part 2: LeMessurier's Innovative Citicorp Design
- Part 3: The Discovery of the Change from Welds to Bolts
- Part 4: Exploring the Effects of Quartering Winds
- Part 5: Further Evidence of the Danger
- Part 6: Mobilizing Support
- Part 7: Accomplishing the Repair Without Causing Panic
- Part 8: The Final Touch: LeMessurier's Good Name
The Online Ethics Center offers a high-quality videotape of a lecture by William LeMessurier on this topic, a lecture that discusses many of the technical details and therefore is particularly useful for civil and mechanical engineering students. Inquiries can be sent to the
All images displayed herein, unless otherwise noted, courtesy William LeMessurier.This page and supporting pages were created by Eric Plosky for Caroline Whitbeck at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.