On October 12, 1977, banking giant Citicorp opened the tallest new skyscraper in New York City since the early 1930s. From afar, the 915-foot tower’s distinctive sloped roof cut through the Midtown skyline like a scalpel. Close up, at ground level, its 59 floors appeared to levitate above a sunken public plaza, a generous architectural gesture to passersby.

Citicorp Center’s design was not universally loved. But the scale and ambition of its engineering were undeniable. In a review, the Times’ architecture critic Paul Goldberger concluded that the bank’s new office, despite lacking in originality, would “probably give more pleasure to more New Yorkers than any other high‐rise building of the decade.”

This prediction almost proved disastrously far from the truth. In fact, were it not fo

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