September 23, 2004
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Aluminum, Your Shiny Friend
(Continued)Vital Statistics:
Location: New York, NY
Completion Date: 1977
Cost: $175 million
Height: 915 feet
Stories: 59
Materials: Steel
Facing Materials: Aluminum,
reflective glass
Click photo
for larger image.“From
the very beginning, the Citicorp Center (today, the Citigroup Center)
in New York City was an engineering challenge. When planning for the
skyscraper began in the early 1970s, the northwest corner of the
proposed building site was occupied by
The
church allowed Citicorp to build the skyscraper under one condition: a
new church would have to be built on the same corner, with no
connection to the Citicorp building and no columns passing through it.
How
did the engineers do it? They set the 59-story tower on four massive
columns, positioned at the center of each side, rather than at the
corners. This design allowed the northwest corner of the building to
cantilever 72 feet over the new church.”Source: PBS, Building BIG.
Citigroup (NYSE:C) is said to be the largest financial services conglomerate in the world.
For
more on the close relationship between churches and banks, see the
works of T. S. Eliot and a description of the City of London,For more on Eliot, architecture, and another Harvard man, use links in the previous entry.
Comments (2)
How did the engineers do it? They messed up. Actually, it was the contractors. They bolted the building’s skeletal structure together, rather than welding it as per spec. This meant the building was susceptible to wind shear, and could collapse in a thunderstorm. The architects found out about it after the building was built, and they had to go back and weld patches over 200 of the bolted connection.
Re the City churches, they are wrong about the opening times of St Mary Abchurch – I had to go there many times before I finally found it open. Worth the effort though. Abchurch Lane features in Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now” – it is where Augustus Melmotte has his headquarters.
Also re the City churches, they have missed out my favourite church – St Michael’s Cornhill, which has a wonderful atmosphere and its own ghost story. Also it has a connection (can’t remember what) with Thomas Gray who wrote Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard – “the paths of glory lead but to the grave”.
Regards, Andrew (http://afroml.blogspot.com/)