The Building Which Nearly Destroyed Manhattan

From Cracked: The Citigroup Center Nearly Destroys Manhattan

Via Wikipedia

When planning the Citigroup Center in the early 1970s, architect William LeMessurier had a little problem: The prospective site was already occupied by St. Peter's Lutheran Church, and they weren't willing to move. If he was going to build a skyscraper on that plot, it would have to be literally in the goddamn sky. So, rather than (understandably) resorting to arson or witchcraft, LeMessurier opted instead to design an entire skyscraper that hung above a quaint little church. The end result was the Citigroup Center, towering 915 feet over the New York streets and absolutely dwarfing God's modest home far below.

Via Wikimedia Commons
Faith is always an instant away from drowning in shattered glass. What a wonderful metaphor for living in New York.

The Embarrassing Failure:

One day engineer Joel Weinstein was looking at the blueprints and noticed something odd: It was a damn skyscraper on stilts. After a few stiff drinks, he managed to mentally get past that terrifying fact and spotted something else of concern: Quartering winds (winds that strike the corners of the building, rather than the flat faces) would cause far more loading force than they'd initially thought. LeMessurier himself looked into it and discovered that instead of the wind joints being welded on, as he had ordered in the design, the plans were switched to bolts during the construction. Which, no matter how much chewing gum you plaster over them to "really stick 'em in there," is simply not the same thing. So how much difference could it make? Well, with the bolts in place instead of welds, experts predicted that on average, New York City was hit by a storm that could topple the building every 55 years. Should the tuned mass damper inside it fail, that rate drops to every 16 years.

Via Wikipedia
"We've been meaning to replace those brown buildings anyway -- just aim for those."

So then what? They ordered the area evacuated at the onset of every storm? Nope. They at least warned people of the impending disaster? Double nope. They sent out a press release stating that the building was in no danger at all, so shut up and stop worrying about it? Triple nop- oh, wait: That's the one. Hey, way to help banks shed their sinister supervillain images, Citigroup. To their credit, however, Citigroup did request that the Red Cross create secret emergency procedures in the event of a collapse. Yep, that's not evil at all: make plans to deal with all the corpses afterward, rather than work on preventing them beforehand.

Construction workers only operated at night (again, in order to keep it secret), hastily welding all the joints every evening, in a deadly race against the impending hurricane season. And they cut it pretty damn close, too: That year, Hurricane Ella headed right toward New York City. The storm would have absolutely created winds fast enough to topple the building, but by a huge stroke of luck, Ella made a last-minute turn back out to sea and the building was fixed without incident.

Via Classic.wunderground.com
"It appears the God of Storms has accepted our sacrificial offer of orphan blood and puppy heads."

But what if things had gone a little differently? What's the worst that could have happened? Citigroup is out an expensive building and maybe a few workers -- but what's a paltry few million and a couple dozen drones to a corporate bank? They can always hatch some more Foreclosure Consultants from the Vault Queen and then it's back to business as usual, right?

Ah, but remember, this building was in the middle of New York City. So if it falls, it's not going to do it all politely with its elbows tucked in. The Red Cross estimated the death toll at a staggering 200,000 people, with 156 city blocks taking further damage.

Via Wikipedia
"Citigroup. Taunting God since 1812."

That's basically the entire island of Manhattan, gone. And all because somebody used the wrong kind of connector. Just something to think about next time you catch yourself replacing that spring with a bent paper clip.

Read more: The 5 Most Embarrassing Architectural Failures Ever | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19682_5-most-embarrassing-architectural-failures_p2.html#ixzz1mz6bhpAE