A Midtown Manhattan high-rise whose structural problems prompted a large-scale evacuation will need to be partially demolished, according to engineering experts.
The 37-story office tower on East 42nd Street ran into trouble Tuesday morning when two of its columns buckled while construction crews were working inside.
Officials and experts said floors between the 21st and 26th levels, in the building near Grand Central Terminal, gave way under pressure. Cracks and sagging floors were also reported in several areas of the tower.
The building, once home to Pfizer’s headquarters and now undergoing conversion into luxury apartments, will require the removal of some damaged sections, experts said. They cautioned that even stabilizing or dismantling parts of the structure could be dangerous, with the potential to trigger a collapse that would be deeply unsettling for many New Yorkers who remember the World Trade Center’s fall on 9/11.
‘The images we have seen show a buckled column, you can see cracking, you can see floors that are sagging, those generally are damage that is not reversible,’ structural engineer Emily Guglielmo told the New York Post.
‘It’s not like we can just push a cracked floor up and it can maintain its capacity, so there will absolutely be removal and replacement of some of these elements.’
Guglielmo said crews would likely have to install “temporary bracing and shoring” to stabilize the tower as quickly as possible, though she warned the work itself could be “too risky.”
Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer who helped investigate the World Trade Center disaster, offered a similar assessment, warning that the building faces a “significant danger” of a localized collapse.
The sagging skyscraper that triggered a massive evacuation in Midtown Manhattan will have to be partially demolished, experts have revealed
FDNY found two structural columns buckled on the 21st floor of the high-rise
Although only some of the columns buckled, Hamburger explained that the beams and columns that remain in-tact are now ‘highly stressed.’
He said the failed columns are now only able to support one-third of the load they were meant to bare, which in turn puts more pressure on the other supports.
The expert predicts workers will need to install brackets on the columns on the 20th floor to re-level the building and ease the load. They will then need to replace the columns that filed.
He warned that crews need to take action ‘rapidly,’ but said they cannot do so until engineers have surveyed the extent of the damage.
Construction crews evacuated the skyscraper just after 8am Tuesday after they discovered that two columns had begun to buckle.
Footage filmed by workers showed the massive silver beams on the 21st and 22nd floors buckling and bending just moments before the floor started to crumble.
Metro Loft Management, the property developer, has insisted there is no risk of the entire building collapsing.
But New York City officials warned the situation remains serious.
The 21st to 26th floors of the building near Grand Central Terminal caved in under stress, officials say. Multiple cracks and sagging floors have been reported throughout the site
Although only some of the building’s columns buckled, experts warn that the beams and columns that remain in-tact are now ‘highly stressed’
Terrifying footage filmed by workers inside the building showed the massive silver beams buckling and bending just moments before the floor started to crumble
RELATED: Belgium Issue Angry Statement Over Controversial Balogun Red Card Decision
City officials gave on-site contractors the greenlight to move forward with emergency repairs Tuesday evening after a floor-by-floor analysis found no additional movement of the damaged columns.
On Tuesday evening, workers could be seen shoring up the damage inside the gleaming glass-and-steel high rise.
Shoring involves installing four-legged scaffolding to temporarily carry the load that the structure is supposed to carry until the columns can be replaced.
That work is expected to continue, impacting Manhattan near the Grand Central train station, which is a hub for metro area commuters and residents, as well as tourists.
Leila Bozorg, one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s deputy mayors, said it was ‘encouraging’ the building did not appear to be shifting as officials went up into and past the damaged floors on their way to the 37th floor – the top floor – of the building.
From the street below, a badly bent structural column could be seen through a large glass window on the 21st floor. FDNY said they found multiple cracks and sagging floors as well.
With more than 1,600 units, property developer MetroLoft says the project is the largest office-to-residential conversion in the city’s history.
Gensler, the architectural firm leading the project, says on its website that it is transforming a pair of 1970s-era office buildings by adding more than a dozen stories and redesigning an adjoining tower.
Construction crews self-evacuated from the 37-story skyscraper after they discovered that two support beams had begun to buckle on the 21st and 22nd floors
Approximately 150 firefighters and EMS members responded to the scene on Tuesday, as well as representatives from the DOB and NYC Emergency Management
The NYC Department of Buildings (DOB) filed a complaint against the building owner, listed as 235 Fee Owner LLC, on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out unauthorized construction.
The complaint alleged that the owner performed construction that went beyond previously approved plans, public records showed.
Specifics of the complaint against the are not yet publicly available but the DOB’s portal stated that ‘no support of excavation has been approved.’
DOB records show the project has been fined by the city for several safety violations, including glass and metal falling off the building, along with an incident where a worker fell off a ladder.
A total of 22 violations were issued at the address, dating back to 2022, according to DOB records. A majority of the violations stemmed from failing to file elevator inspection and testing reports.
Thirteen complaints remain active, with 235 Fee Owner LLC owing the city $39,000 in penalties.
Spokespersons for Gensler and MetroLoft did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
But in a statement to The New York Times, MetroLoft stressed that the building itself is not at risk of collapse and that no debris fell from the building.
East 42nd Street, between Second and Third avenues, was closed to pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and at least eight nearby buildings were evacuated
People are evacuated out of a building surrounding 235 East 42nd Street on Tuesday
Nathan Berman, founder of MetroLoft, told The Wall Street Journal that the added weight from widening the top 15 or so floors of the building likely caused the damage. The two columns that buckled may not have been properly reinforced, he told the newspaper.
‘Why those particular two columns and nothing else? We don’t know,’ Berman told the Journal. ‘We’re investigating that.’
He maintained the building’s integrity wasn’t compromised.
‘Ninety-five percent of the building, the structure is sound and intact,’ Berman told the Journal. ‘There is no way that this corner of a small extension all of a sudden topples this building.’
Emily Guglielmo, a structural engineer based in California, said the buckled columns are likely not repairable and will need to be removed and replaced.
‘A lot of these things – cracking, deflections, sagging – those elements are probably not salvageable,’ she said.
