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 for two college students who helped uncover a grave flaw in the building’s engineering, Citicorp Center might have killed thousands of New Yorkers.

Citicorp Center still stands today, though it has since been renamed 601 Lexington. But in some ways, it is not the same structure it was in 1977.

Unbeknownst to its owners, occupants and even architects, the brand-new $128-million skyscraper was far more vulnerable to wind than previously believed. If a storm knocked out the power to its stabilizing device, a strong enough gust could make it collapse — and, on average, winds powerful enough to topple the building would occur in New York every 16 years. When the tower’s engineer realized this in July 1978, hurricane season was already underway.

The Citicorp Center pictured days before it was officially dedicated in October 1977. UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Within months, welders had carried out corrective work under the cover of darkness. A newspaper strike at the time meant knowledge of how close New York came to disaster remained largely hidden from the public until the mid-1990s.

Now, a comprehensive new book on the crisis, “The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City’s Citicorp Tower,” delves into the human stories behind the events of 1978 — especially that of William LeMessurier, the structural engineer who blew the whistle on himself after being alerted to potenti