Midtown Manhattan building found to be unstable, prompting evacuations and affecting thousands

More than a dozen blocks in the heart of midtown Manhattan were evacuated Tuesday as contractors worked to shore up an unstable high-rise building that officials had worried was at risk of partial collapse.

Beams are buckling on the 21st floor of the building, 235 E. 42nd St., a onetime office tower near Second Avenue. That building is being converted into apartments, blocks from Grand Central Terminal, the Chrysler Building and the United Nations. Set to be 37 stories tall, the project is among New York City's biggest such conversions.

Tuesday afternoon, a team of six — consisting of city personnel who specialize in construction safety and engineering, as well as the FDNY and a contractor — entered the building to assess the structure and determined that shoring efforts were safe to start, said David Maggiotto, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Buildings. The team gave contractors the green light to move forward with installing temporary shoring to stabilize the building. Further work would continue through the night and in the coming days, Maggiotto said.

The unstable building was evacuated. The FDNY said buildings at 221 and 225 E. 43rd St., and at 815 Second Ave., also were evacuated, along with those on East 41st Street. 

Late Tuesday, New York City Emergency Management posted on X that the buildings at 815 Second Ave. and 225 E. 43rd St. remained under an evacuation order, along with the restaurant on the ground floor of the building at 217 East 43rd St., and the building at 235 E. 43rd Street. 

Along with offices and hotels, at least one school for children was evacuated, the FDNY said.

At 5 a.m. Wednesday, those evacuation orders had not been updated. The message said that those who work in the area but not in one of the impacted buildings will be able to get to their office.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged the public to stay away from the area, spanning 40th to 45th streets and between First and Third avenues, saying it will be closed indefinitely. The NYPD has prohibited pedestrians and vehicles from entering the "frozen zone."

"It's a very serious situation. The box beams, the steel beams have started to bend and deflect from the weight," said John Esposito, the FDNY's chief of department, at a news conference with Mamdani and other city officials Tuesday afternoon. He called it a "minute-by-minute situation."

"We are only going to allow New Yorkers to return back into these buildings when we are fully confident that it is safe for them to do so," he said.

The building had been seen moving but hadn't moved in hours, Maggiotto said Tuesday afternoon. 

Officials said they are monitoring it for potential collapse. There have been no reports of injuries, and Esposito said all workers in the building have been accounted for.

Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said the building is being monitored from nearby "on a continuous basis."

Esposito said that the building is steel-framed, and if it were to collapse, "it would not be a total collapse" but "more of a localized collapse."

No pedestrian or vehicular traffic is allowed in the "frozen zone" until the area is found to be secure. The restricted area has widened throughout the day. 

A statement from the building developer, Metro Loft, that appeared in The New York Times said: "The safety of everyone at and surrounding the building is our number one priority. We’re thankful there were no injuries, and as the D.O.B. clarified, no debris fell from the building. We want to confirm that the affected area is a small section of one of the two buildings on this site. As the FDNY spokesperson noted, the entire building itself is not at risk of collapse."

Metro Loft did not respond to Newsday's request for comment.

According to city buildings records, over the last year the project drew dozens of complaints, and several violations were issued. Among the complaints were unsafe building demolition, unlicensed workers and a part of a door flying across the street.

Brothers Gregg Sarra Jr. and Jeffrey Sarra work in the building directly across the street from 235 E. 42nd St., and as they walked to their jobs Tuesday at home and community health nonprofit VNS Health, they wondered why a crowd had gathered to stare up at it. 

Jeffrey Sarra, of upstate Carmel, initially assumed he was witnessing some sort of protest before he and his co-workers tuned into the news. Gregg Sarra Jr., 35, of Bohemia, said the situation felt "a little bit unnerving."

"There’s always that thought in the back of your head, something post-9/11," Gregg Sarra Jr. added. "Something going on in the city is always worrisome. I understand that they said it was the building, but there’s always that thought of, ‘What if it’s something else?’"

The FDNY first got word of the emergency through a 911 call at 7:57 a.m. with a report of "bricks falling." Responders did not find falling bricks but did discover structural problems upstairs.

The FDNY said it had reports of floors sagging between the 21st and 26th floors and determined two columns of the 21st and 22nd floors had buckled.

For decades, the building was known as the Pfizer Building, home to Pfizer's world headquarters, as well as to Electrolux, the Alexander Hamilton Institute, the Taiwanese mission to the United Nations and a bank branch operated by Chase Manhattan Bank.

The main building was built in 1960, designed by Emery Roth & Sons in the international style, and it was merged with an original 10-story structure at 219 E. 42nd St. built in 1905, according to accounts of the building history. Both are to be part of the residential complex.

It currently is under a redevelopment that began in 2024 to convert space to about 1,500 apartments and add four floors to the original 33-story building. 

During Eric Adams' mayoralty, the city revved up a lemons-to-lemonade plan to convert disused and antiquated office space into apartments and address the city's record-low residential vacancy rate and housing shortage.

Newsday's Nicholas Grasso contributed to this story.