Five decades into a multistoried career, ENR Legacy Award winner Silvian Marcus continues to design unique structures for clients

Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, structural engineer Irwin G. Cantor—guided by steel erector Bobby Stuart—walked up a darkened staircase to the 18th floor of a World Financial Center tower near Ground Zero, which his office had engineered in the 1980s.

Steep tuition and vertigo steered George J. Tamaro away from architecture and high-rise engineering, so he went underground—becoming one of construction’s most accomplished “below-grade guys” in a 50-plus-year career in New York and globally as a foundation engineer and geotechnical building expert.