“Leslie Robertson was the engineering whiz kid whose innovations helped erect the 110-story towers. And when his buildings were savagely attacked and collapsed, taking close to 3,000 lives, he felt a shock and horror that is a structural engineer’s worst nightmare … Having poured more than 40 years of his life into the construction and maintenance of the original World Trade Center, Robertson — among the last surviving creators of the iconic complex — has spent the past 10 years trying to accept the 9/11 terrorist attacks as part of “the risk that we all take” just being alive.”
“And while the darkest day in New York history brought down his towers, one of the successor buildings will give him perhaps some measure of symbolic redemption on those sacred 16 acres. His firm, Leslie E. Robertson Associates, is the structural engineer firm for Four World Trade Center, the 72-story tower rising next to where the Twin Towers stood. Though Robertson himself is not working on the project (he retired in 1996, but remains a self-described workaholic), he offers guidance to his team.”
Excerpted from Towering Comeback written by amNewYork Editors Rolando Pujol and Graham Wood.
Leslie Robertson in his office in Lower Manhattan a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
Leslie Robertson on the WTC site with 1 World Trade (left) and 7 World Trade (right) behind him.
During an interview with amNewYork, Leslie Robertson described the range of emotions he experienced after learning of the attack on the World Trade Center which he helped build roughly 40 years earlier. “I had a lot of time to think about it, and I tried to sort it out in my mind if there was something I should have done that I didn’t,” Robertson said. “I couldn’t come up with anything … I mean, you can always make a building stronger.”
