Contractors have been cleared to begin installing temporary shoring at a damaged Midtown high-rise after city inspectors completed an initial assessment of the unstable building, the Department of Buildings (DOB) said Tuesday evening.
The update came hours after structural columns and steel beams buckled inside 235 E. 42nd St., a major office-to-residential conversion project that prompted evacuations of nearby buildings and a frozen zone across several blocks of Midtown.
DOB said its assessment team had completed its initial review of the damaged section of the building and determined that contractors on site could move forward with temporary shoring to stabilize the structure. The agency said regular monitoring of the damaged section was ongoing and that there had been no additional movement of the damaged columns since the morning.
The emergency shoring is intended to stabilize the building, DOB said, with additional stabilization work expected to continue throughout Tuesday evening and in the coming days.
As of 6 p.m., City Hall said the frozen zone from 40th to 45th streets between First and Third avenues would remain in place while DOB and FDNY continued assessing the surrounding area.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s deputy press secretary, Matt Rauschenbach, told amNewYork that the DOB and FDNY were “going building-by-building and continuing to assess the surrounding area to determine any potential changes to street closures and whether buildings that had been evacuated can be repopulated.”
Concerns of potential collapse at Midtown high-rise
Earlier Tuesday, the NYPD had instituted the frozen zone, temporarily closing the area to pedestrians and vehicles. A collapse zone was also established around the site.
First responders found structural problems on the 21st floor, where two structural columns had buckled, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during a midday briefing. Multiple cracks and sagging floors were also found on the 21st floor, he added.
Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said the FDNY had 150 fire and EMS personnel and more than 50 units at the site by midday. Firefighters initially entered the building to conduct a search and were in contact with construction crews before officials confirmed that all workers had been accounted for and no injuries had been reported.
FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito said the building’s box beams and steel beams had begun to bend and deflect from the weight, and that the structure had continued to move after firefighters arrived.
Because the building is a steel-frame structure, Esposito said officials were concerned about a localized collapse rather than a total collapse.
“The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building, so it would not be a total collapse,” Esposito said. “It would be more of a localized collapse, but that remains our concern.”
While no injuries had been reported, all workers were evacuated from the building. Mamdani said seven surrounding buildings were also evacuated as a precaution.
A school with about 400 children was also evacuated.
Midtown skyscraper beams bent ‘like cigarettes’
The NYPD instituted a frozen zone from 40th to 45th streets between First and Third avenues, temporarily closing the area to pedestrians and vehicles. A collapse zone was also established around the site.
“Our top priority right now is the safety of those who live in this area, the safety of those who work in this area,” Mamdani said, adding that Department of Buildings (DOB) inspectors and engineers were on site working with FDNY and the project’s engineers.
Officials urged New Yorkers to avoid the area while engineers worked to determine when crews could safely enter the 21st floor and begin shoring up the structure.
Mamdani said the situation was being assessed “minute by minute” and that residents and workers would only be allowed back into evacuated buildings once officials were fully confident it was safe.
“I want to be honest with New Yorkers that this is a fast-developing situation,” Mamdani said. “We are taking it minute by minute.”
DOB officials said construction safety inspectors and engineers were monitoring the building from the street and from nearby vantage points, while FDNY drones were being used to watch the movement. Officials said specialized tools were being used to detect even small shifts in the structure, including movements measured in centimeters or fractions of an inch.
DOB said the structural issue involved load-bearing columns, and that emergency shoring equipment, including struts, beams and columns, was being brought to the site to take on the compromised load. Officials said crews would only enter the 21st floor to begin that work once engineers determined it was safe.
The initial 911 call reported bricks falling from the upper floors, but DOB officials said inspectors did not see evidence of material coming off the building when they arrived.
The DOB said inspectors were called to 235 E. 42nd St. earlier Tuesday to investigate reports that a steel beam on the 21st floor had been compromised. DOB confirmed the location is an active, permitted construction site to convert the existing commercial office building into a residential building, and identified the project’s general contractor as Robert Travis of 235 GC LLC. The agency said its investigation remained ongoing.
DOB officials said the office-to-residential conversion had gone through an extensive plan review over the past two years, including reviews related to code changes and structural requirements. Officials said investigators were now examining what caused the structural failure and would compare the incident against those prior reviews.
235 E. 42nd St. is part of an office-to-residential conversion spearheaded by Metro Loft Management.
Metro Loft describes the former Pfizer headquarters project spanning 219-235 E. 42nd St. as a 1.3-million-square-foot conversion that will house approximately 1,600 luxury rental apartments. The company says the project includes a 21-story addition atop 219 E. 42nd St., which currently stands 10 stories tall, and calls it New York City’s largest office-to-residential conversion to date. The project was slated to be completed in early 2027, according to Metro Loft’s website.
Cliff Johnson of Steamfitters Local 638, whose workers install fire protection within the building, alleged that the developers had not installed enough steel supports to accommodate the project’s increased load.
“They obviously didn’t add the right amount of steel. So, the north side of that building is crumbling, the I-beams are bending like cigarettes in there, which is super dangerous,” Johnson said.
A photo obtained by amNewYork shows a support beam inside the structure visibly bent at its center.
“You have studs, and you have sheet rock; they’re bent in half right now. That’s how much you’ve dropped on that side of the building,” Johnson said. “This just started happening today, and it happened fast, because they keep adding. As you add, you put more weight. When you put more weight, that’s what’s going to happen when it’s not engineered correctly or installed correctly.”
Johnson also alleged that the building’s developers chose cheaper, non-union labor to cut costs on steel installation and other parts of the project. City officials have not determined the cause of the structural failure, and DOB said its investigation is ongoing.
In a statement to The Real Deal, a spokesperson for Metro Loft Management said the firm is “working closely with the Department of Buildings to understand the full scope of the situation.”
amNewYork has reached out to Metro Loft Management and 235 GC LLC for comment.
Firefighters and officers from the 17th Precinct rushed to the scene. All construction workers inside the former Pfizer building and people in nearby buildings were evacuated.
One of the impacted buildings was the Hampton Inn. Kevin Oglesvee, who was staying at the hotel and due to leave New York on Tuesday, described the evacuation order.
“We got a call over PA, somebody came over the PA and just said, ‘Hey, this is not a drill, need evacuation right away,’” Oglesvee said. “It was real loud. They said to evacuate onto Second Avenue. We’re in from Chicago, we’re supposed to be at the airport in a couple of hours. My laptop bag and all my stuff are upstairs.”
According to the city’s Department of Buildings database, the building has 13 active violations totaling $39,000 in fines for elevator-related issues. It also has a complaint filed on July 7 about a compromised steel beam on the 21st floor, reported by the site safety manager
With reporting by Cate Corcoran.
