Danger of Midtown High-rise of Collapsing
New York Times
 |
Here’s the latest.
The status of a Midtown Manhattan office building that suffered structural damage remained unclear early Wednesday, hours after New York City’s buildings commissioner said that it was stable for now but warned of tense days ahead.
“I can say right now the building is stable,” the commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, said late Tuesday. “We feel confident in the emergency plan we have now.”
Construction crews hammered and welded through the night at the former Pfizer building in Midtown, shoring up sections of the failed structure. Officers with the New York Police Department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit flew a drone beside the building, close to the 21st floor, throughout the night. The video captured two workers in hard hats inside the building, inspecting the floor where support beams had buckled.
Police officers blocked all traffic on East 42nd and 43rd Streets between Second and Third Avenues, and authorities said early Wednesday that traffic in that area remained restricted. Those who worked or lived in the area would have access, however, unless the buildings were under evacuation orders. Five buildings remained fully or partially evacuated.
Fire officials received reports on Tuesday morning about “a structural issue” at 235 East 42nd Street, the former Pfizer headquarters that is being converted into a housing complex with more than 1,600 apartments. Architects had called the project, scheduled to be completed in 2027, the largest of its kind in the city’s history.
Two support columns inside the building began buckling and several upper floors were sagging, the Fire Department said on Tuesday. The authorities initially created a “frozen zone” from 40th to 45th Streets between First and Third Avenues as they worked to stabilize the building. Although the so-called frozen zone has shrunk considerably, Mr. Tigani said that “the public should not engage with that area.”
The situation disrupted Midtown Manhattan, as construction workers and people in nearby buildings, including tourists and school students, were evacuated. There were no injuries, the Fire Department said.
Here’s what else to know:
Developer’s response: Nathan Berman, the founder of MetroLoft, the developer behind the project, said in an interview that there was never any danger that the building would collapse, calling the episode “a typical construction mishap.” A spokesman for the city’s Buildings Department said the structure was still being stabilized and an investigation was continuing.
Upper floors: Mr. Tigani said late Tuesday that officials were monitoring the building for any signs that it was unstable. Emergency shoring was being undertaken on the 20th and 21st floors of the building, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president, said in a social media post late Tuesday.
Midtown construction: The project is part of a campaign to turn Midtown Manhattan’s empty office buildings into residential spaces to help address a housing shortage and revitalize the area.
Workers holding orange flags and wearing neon yellow hi-visibility vests bearing the name “CCM” gathered on East 42nd Street behind a forklift preparing to enter the construction site. The usually busy two-lane street is closed to traffic between Second and Third Avenues.
Michael Piccirillo, 48, a carpenter and the director of area standards for the New York City District Council of Carpenters, said that his group was part of the protest outside of the building site on Wednesday. He said his team had interviewed MetroLoft workers and felt they were taken advantage of.
“If they’re OK with paying bottom of the barrel wages,” he said of MetroLoft, “who knows where else corners were cut.”
While it was too early to know what exactly had gone wrong at the construction site, he said that union workers train rigorously and go through apprenticeships, which help prevent similar issues from happening at union work sites.
“Our apprentices are taught to understand safety first,” he said. “It’s training that you’re taught that unfortunately the nonunion workforce doesn’t get.”
The building
The Eistin g Structure of 219 East 42 Street or 235 E.42 St
July 8, 2026, 9:19 a.m. ET53 minutes ago
Claire FahyMetro reporter
A truck has pulled up to the intersection at East 43rd and Third Avenue with a screen attached with messages targeting the developers behind the building’s conversion to residential units. “Crime Scene,” one message reads, while another says “1,600 residential units at risk due to cutting corners.” Other protesters are starting to gather with signs that read “Shame on Metro Loft,” the name of the developer Nathan Berman’s company.
 |
A group of office workers and Hampton Inn guests amassed on the corner of East 43rd and Second Avenue on Wednesday morning, hoping for information about getting their belongings out of evacuated buildings.
Eriq Bawatneh, 46, was waiting to collect documents from his office when his boss called from inside the office to tell him that he could come in. Bawatneh said he worked at Quality Building Services, on the corner right next to the troubled building.
“It was a little chaotic,” he said of his workday on Tuesday. “They asked us to evacuate immediately and they didn’t allow us anywhere near the building for the rest of the day.”
He said he and his colleagues grabbed computers, files, paperwork and anything else they could get their hands on before quickly leaving the building.
Claire Fahy
July 8, 2026, 7:35 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Claire FahyMetro reporter
At 7:30 a.m., an elevator was moving up and down the sagging side of the building. The early morning sun illuminated the bent white column that was a source of concern yesterday. Crews were at work “shoring up” the floors with structural issues, but it remained unclear exactly what the work entailed.
Max Von Bonsdorff, 59, in town on business from Italy, waited on the corner of East 43rd Street and Second Avenue on Wednesday morning, hoping to be let back in to the Hampton Inn Grand Central to get his luggage. He had a train booked to leave the city later in the day. He said he had never experienced anything like this while traveling and had stayed only one night at the hotel before being relocated last night during the evacuation.
“I’ve been both working and in meetings, but of course at the same time waiting for information,” he said.
Nassin Khavaran, 52, lives and works in Midtown Manhattan right by the building. She said she was at her job as a travel and leisure consultant on Tuesday when clients began telling her there was a building on East 43rd and Second Avenue that might collapse. She was initially concerned that it was her apartment building, before quickly learning it was not.
She was able to get back into her apartment on East 43rd Street by 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Her corner was unusually busy in the quiet neighborhood, but she was unfazed.
“I’m not worried about anything in life,” she said.
As the sun crept up over the East River and the morning commute began in earnest, traffic flowed freely down Second Avenue. The western side of the avenue was closed to pedestrians between East 43rd Street and East 42nd Street, and those two streets were still blocked off between Second and Third Avenues. Other than a high number of police barricades, there were few signs that anything was amiss in Midtown Manhattan.
A few minutes after midnight, police officers with the N.Y.P.D.’s Technical Assistance Response Unit flew a drone around the compromised building. The video captured two workers in hard hats inside, inspecting the floor where support beams had buckled.
Tigani said Tuesday night that the frozen zone had “shrunk considerably” and now included the area from 42nd to 43rd Streets between Second and Third Avenues, but said that “the public should not engage with that area.” He said traffic would return to those avenues “very soon” but that the neighborhood may remain in a tense situation “for the next couple of days.” He said city workers were “working tremendously hard” to ensure the neighborhood was safe for residents.
Comments