The city’s Department of Buildings on Tuesday said a high-rise tower under construction in Midtown is now stable after structural columns buckled. The building, Pfizer’s former headquarters on 42nd Street, which is currently being converted into a new residential development, was found to be structurally compromised, prompting the city to evacuate several buildings in the area and close surrounding streets. DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani on Tuesday night said crews were able to enter and stabilize the impacted floors as part of an emergency intervention. Evacuation orders were lifted for some buildings, and the police reopened some streets, although 42nd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues remains closed to vehicles. Work to stabilize the building will continue this week.
As part of an emergency intervention that began last night, crews brought in metal beams and poles, as well as galvanized steel, to replace the buckled columns. After the building is stabilized, plans for a long-term solution will need to be established.
“I can say right now that the building is stable,” Tigani said on Tuesday night. “It has not moved since we started monitoring it earlier today. We feel confident in the emergency plan that we have now to make it stable.”
The buildings still under an emergency evacuation order include: 15 2nd Avenue, 235 East 43rd Street, 231 East 43rd Street, 225 East 43rd Street, and a partial evacuation of 217 East 43rd Street.
Tigani would not speculate on the cause of the structural failure and said the city will continue to investigate. The commissioner added that the city will look at the approved plans for the conversion project to understand the situation.
Just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, fire officials received a 911 call about falling bricks near East 42nd Street. Department of Buildings officials found that wasn’t the case, but did confirm that two structural columns on the 21st floor of 235 East 42nd Street had buckled. Officials deemed the structure unstable and evacuated the building and surrounding areas, and established a collapse zone.
Fire Department officials said steel beams on the 21st floor of the 37-story building on 42nd Street started to “bend and deflect,” and multiple cracks and sagging floors were discovered. The police closed 40th to 45th Streets between 1st and 3rd Avenues to pedestrian and vehicular traffic as first responders and engineers work to shore up the building.
During a press conference at the scene, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said there have been no injuries, and all construction workers at the site have been accounted for.
“This is an extremely serious situation, and I am thankful to our first responders for quickly arriving at the site and to New Yorkers for reacting calmly and with urgency,” Mamdani said. He urged New Yorkers to avoid the area.
FDNY Chief John Esposito said the building had continued to move since the first responders arrived on the scene. Since it’s a steel-frame building, it “would not be a total collapse,” Esposito said. “It would be more of a localized collapse,” he added.
As of 4 p.m., NYC Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg told NY1 that the building is no longer moving, allowing for a team of six people to enter the building to assess the damage.
Metro Loft Developers and David Werner Real Estate are currently converting the former Pfizer headquarters building, which sits between Grand Central Terminal and the United Nations, into more than 1,600 apartments, set to be the largest office-to-residential conversion in the country.
Designed by Gensler, the project added 19 stories atop the original 10-story building at 219 East 42nd Street and four stories to the taller tower at 235 East 42nd Street. About 100,000 square feet of amenities are planned. Leasing was scheduled to start this summer.
Nathan Berman of MetroLoft told The Real Deal that reports of a possible collapse have been “blown a little bit out of proportion,” and the issues are “fixable.”
Berman also told the website that claims from a Steamfitters Local 638 worker that the building had not used enough steel to support the additional weight were “total nonsense.”
“This was well designed and approved by structural engineers,” Berman said. “This is a freak accident that something occurred with these two specific columns that either were not reinforced or were not reinforced sufficiently, and they gave way. That’s it. There’s no mystery, and there’s no magic.”
Editor’s note: The original version of this story was published on July 7, 2026, and has since been updated. This story will continue to be updated as the situation develops.
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