Crews shore up threatened Manhattan tower

Emergency crews began stabilising a structurally compromised Midtown Manhattan high-rise after buckled columns, cracked floors and visible deflection forced evacuations around a major office-to-residential conversion site near Grand Central Terminal.

The 37-storey building at 235 East 42nd Street, formerly part of Pfizer’s global headquarters, was declared unstable after workers reported structural distress on Tuesday morning. By evening, engineers had entered the affected area, installed jacks and started placing temporary steel supports designed to redistribute the load around the damaged section.

The alarm began shortly before 8am when the New York Fire Department received a 911 call reporting bricks falling from upper floors. Fire and emergency medical units reached the site quickly, assessed the building and ordered evacuations at the construction site and surrounding properties. No injuries were reported, and all construction workers were accounted for.

City officials said two structural columns had buckled around the 21st and 22nd floors, with cracks and sagging affecting several levels above. The immediate concern was not a full collapse of the tower onto surrounding streets, but a localised failure inside the steel-frame structure that could endanger workers, nearby occupants and pedestrians if the compromised section shifted further.

A frozen zone was imposed from 40th to 45th Streets between First and Third Avenues, cutting off pedestrian and vehicle access across a busy part of Midtown East. The disruption affected nearby residential buildings, a hotel, offices and a school running a summer programme for about 400 children. Some evacuation orders were later narrowed after monitoring showed the building had stopped moving for several hours.

Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said engineers were focusing on emergency shoring, further inspection and a safety plan for the next phase of work. Monitoring positions were set up both outside and inside the building to detect movement. Officials said a third-party engineer had also been brought in to review the stabilisation effort.

Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said more than 150 fire and emergency personnel and over 50 units were deployed during the response. FDNY drones were used to inspect parts of the tower that were too dangerous for crews to enter during the first hours of the emergency. Fire Chief John Esposito said steel beams had begun bending under weight, making the building unsafe until additional supports could be installed.

The tower is part of a large conversion project covering 219 and 235 East 42nd Street, a pair of former office buildings being redeveloped into more than 1,600 apartments. The scheme, led by Metro Loft Management and David Werner Real Estate Investments, has been described as one of the largest office-to-housing conversions in New York City. Gensler is attached to the project as architect.

The redevelopment involves converting office space into residential units and adding floors to part of the complex. Officials said the project had undergone extensive plan review, but the cause of the buckling remained under investigation. Structural engineers are expected to examine whether construction sequencing, load distribution, temporary supports, materials, design assumptions or site practices contributed to the failure.

The incident has drawn attention to the technical risks facing large adaptive-reuse projects as New York pushes office conversions to address housing shortages and weak demand for older commercial space. Midtown and Lower Manhattan contain millions of square feet of ageing office stock that developers have been seeking to transform into apartments, helped by policy changes and tax incentives aimed at increasing housing supply.

Office-to-residential conversions can be complex because commercial buildings often have deep floor plates, different plumbing and ventilation requirements, heavy mechanical systems and structural designs not originally intended for residential layouts. Adding floors or reconfiguring façades can place new demands on older frames, requiring careful load analysis, staged demolition, temporary bracing and continuous monitoring.