ABSTRACT
On a warm June day in 1978, William J. LeMessurier, one of the nation's leading structural engineers, received a phone call at his headquarters, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from an engineering student in New Jersey. To clear space for the new church, Hugh Stubbins and Bill LeMessurier set their fifty-nine-story tower on four massive, nine-stoty-high stilts, and positioned them at the center of each side, rather than at each corner. This daring scheme allowed the designers to cantilever the building's corners seventy-two feet out over the church, on the northwest, and over a plaza on the southwest. As an experienced engineer, LeMessurier liked to think he could solve most structural problems, and the Citicorp tower was no exception. The bolted joints were readily accessible, thanks to Hugh Stubbins' insistence on putting the chevrons inside the building's skin rather than displaying them outside. With money and materials, the joints could be reinforced by welding heavy steel plates over them, like giant Band-Aids.
