While at MIT, LeMessurier worked for Albert Goldberg, an established Boston structural engineer; eventually LeMessurier became a partner and the firm was renamed Goldberg-LeMessurier Associates. In April 1961, the two separated and Will launched his firm
LeMessurier Consultants. LeMessurier was responsible for the structural engineering on a large number of prominent buildings, including
Boston City Hall, the
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the
Singapore Treasury Building, and the
Dallas Main Center. LeMessurier is perhaps best known for his role during the
Citicorp Center engineering crisis, when he secretly reassessed his calculations on the
Citicorp headquarters tower in
New York City after the building had been finished in 1977. In June 1978,
Princeton University engineering student
Diane Hartley contacted LeMessurier's office after she identified that winds could topple the building under certain circumstances. Later, another young student, Lee deCarolis, prompted LeMessurier to redo his analysis. He discovered that the contractor had replaced the required welded joints with lower-cost, and potentially weaker bolted joints. This weakness could contribute to the building collapsing in "... quartering" winds. This realization triggered a hurried, clandestine retrofit, which was described in a 1995 article in
The New Yorker titled "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis". The case is now an ethical case-study in architectural degree programs. == Awards ==