20 Famous Skyscrapers That Had Major Structural Flaws

For decades, First Canadian Place was instantly recognizable by the pale Carrara marble covering its enormous exterior, but the material eventually became one of the tower’s most serious maintenance concerns. The skyscraper had opened in 1975 with thousands of thin marble panels attached to its façade, a design choice similar to the one that later caused major problems at Chicago’s Aon Center. In 2007, a marble panel weighing hundreds of pounds detached from the building and fell from roughly the 60th-floor level, forcing surrounding streets to close while engineers investigated the exterior. Temporary protective measures were installed, but the long-term solution was far more ambitious: approximately 45,000 marble panels were removed and replaced with glass and ceramic-fritted components. The enormous recladding operation took several years and was completed in 2012, fundamentally changing the appearance of Canada’s tallest office building at the time.