If you ever think you can’t make a difference, or that your input into a conversation doesn’t matter, just remember Diane Hartley.

The Citicorp building in New York City opened in 1977. It was the seventh tallest building in the city, recognizable because of the 45-degree angled roof on top. It was even more distinctive because it was built on nine-story tall stilts. At the base of the building was St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, which required the Citicorp building to be erected on stilts to avoid the church. But because of the church’s location, the stilts had to be placed in the center of the wall’s four sides. This required extra internal structures to keep the building stable whenever the wind gusted down the streets of the city. The engineer LeMessurier received many accolades for his innovative design and everything seemed fine until one day a phone call was received by someone in his office. An undergraduate architecture student named Diane Hartley had been fascinated by this building project. But when she did the math, calculating the force of winds hitting the building at its corners, she was sure it would cause it to collapse. LeMessurier re-did his calculations and discovered she was right and that windstorms powerful enough to cause this disaster hit the city with some frequency. This prompted frantic repairs, done quietly in the evening when the offices were empty, until the engineer’s error was corrected. The Citicorp building safely stands to this day.

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