One of the most “celebrated” facade failures of the 20^th century was the John Hancock Building in Boston.

As it was nearing completion in 1976, its glass curtain wall panels—each weighing about 500 pounds—began failing. The vacant openings were filled temporarily with plywood, earning it the nickname “Plywood Palace.”

At the time, SUPERSTRUCTURES’ founding principal, Paul Millman, PE, RA was working on his MS in Civil Engineering at MIT where he was recruited to assist a consortium of MIT professors who were investigating the failure. The assignment involved many hours on the window washing rig, hunting for imperfections in the glazing (but with spectacular 50-story views of Boston). Eventually, all 10,334 lights of glass were replaced.

The point to this chapter in Paul’s work history: before founding SUPERSTRUCTURES in 1982, and even before the earliest iteration of NYC’s Facade Inspection & Safety Program (Local Law 10 of 1980), a systematic, scientific approach to restoring building envelopes was on our radar.

Since then, SUPERSTRUCTURES has tackled thousands of building envelope issues, large and small. But Paul still occasionally looks back to his time in Boston working on one of the biggest—and most notorious—challenges of its iconic skyline.