- If you build it, something will go wrong.
Huge construction projects are rarely easy. With practically all of them, you can expect at least a few spanners in the works along the way.
Sometimes, though, the spanners just keep piling up. And they’re big ones.
We can all probably name at least a couple of miserable building projects around our hometowns that have gone on for years and surpassed their budgets many times over. But some buildings’ construction was such a disastrous process that they ended up in the history books.
Here is a selection of some of history’s most unfortunate construction projects. Whether it was massive construction blunders, eternally stretching timelines, or simply a massive number of deaths, all of these buildings are infamous for being a pain to build.
5. Citicorp Building
The Citicorp building in New York City — today known as the Citigroup Center — was in all honesty relatively painless to build. Sure, a couple of initial plans had to be scrapped, but the skyscraper was completed in roughly a year after construction began in 1976.
There was just one problem. Unbeknownst to the head structural engineer William LeMessurier, the contractor didn’t weld the tower’s structural joints together as planned.
Instead, the contractor used bolts to save money. They had good intentions and the tower stayed upright so no harm done, right?
Well, once LeMessurier found out about the substitution, he did some calculations. It turned out that the bolts couldn’t support the building in high winds and it was susceptible to disastrous structural collapse.
To remedy the problem, workers welded the joints to in secret and the tower is now structurally sound. But we’re sure the public would’ve loved it if the constructors had told them that the Citicorp building could’ve collapsed at any moment.
4. Neuschwanstein Castle
King Ludwig II of Bavaria really loved the opera composer Richard Wagner’s work. So, in 1869, he decided to construct Neuschwanstein Castle, a fairytale-like retreat that was less of a home for the king and more of a giant stage for Wagner to perform.
The king paid for the castle out of his own pocket and according to initial estimates, it was supposed to take three years to build.
Fast-forward 14 years and the castle still wasn’t ready. Oh, and Richard Wagner died that year, putting a bit of a damper on Ludwig II’s plans.
Well, at least the king could still live in his castle. Well, he could’ve — but he found the sounds of the constantly ongoing construction so irritating he only ever spent 172 days in the castle before his death in 1886.
A vast portion of Ludwig II’s wealth went into the castle, but in the end, it was never completed. To this day, 154 years after construction began, Neuschwanstein Castle is unfinished.
3. Palace of Versailles
Ah, Versailles! Today, the palace and its 700 rooms are known as one of the most magnificent monuments to luxury and opulence ever built.
And that luxury came at a staggering price in human lives.
Versailles got its beginnings as the French king’s humble hunting lodge. But Louis XIV — the Sun King — decided to turn it into the pompous palace it is today.
The issue was that the original hunting lodge stood in the middle of inhospitable swampland. That, combined with the harsh treatment of workers at the time, resulted in the deaths of thousands of workers.
The swampy conditions brought on disease, while brutal taskmasters worked the laborers to the brink of death. Just between 1684 and 1685, 1,320 workers died to make Versailles happen.
2. Willow Island
The Willow Island disaster in West Virginia is another deathly construction disaster. Granted, in pure numbers, it’s nothing compared to Versailles or, say, the Panama Canal, the deadliest construction project of all time.
But proportionally, Willow Island just might take the cake. That’s because everybody who worked on it died in 1978.
While building the Pleasants Power Station’s second cooling tower, a slack cable caused a construction crane to fall inside the tower. As it hit the structure, the concrete layers began to unravel and crumble, causing the tower to collapse inwards.
In total, 51 workers — the entire workforce constructing the tower — fell to their death and were buried under the rubble. When rescuers finally dug out, their remains were so badly damaged that many of the men were only identified from the items in their pockets.
Today, Willow Island is one of, if not the deadliest construction accident in U.S. history.
1. Choluteca Bridge
Very little went wrong during the building of the bridge spanning the Choluteca River in Honduras. It opened to traffic in 1998 without problems and was at the time a marvel of engineering in Latin America.
But a freak act of nature made Choluteca Bridge potentially the unluckiest construction project ever.
You see, the same year the bridge opened, Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras. The intense storm was a disaster, killing approximately 7,000 people.
But it also rerouted the Choluteca River. The force of the storm caused massive flooding in the river and the waters carved an entirely new route through the land.
After the storm, the river flowed around the bridge, not under it. The Choluteca Bridge was now a bridge over absolutely nothing, earning it the nickname the Bridge to Nowhere.
It took until 2003 before workers could reroute the river and reconnect the bridge to the Honduran road network. For five years, it stood as a reminder that no matter what we build, Mother Nature will mess it up as soon as she feels like it.
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