Two structural columns inside a 37-story Manhattan tower buckled Tuesday morning, sending floors sagging, triggering mass evacuations across Midtown, and raising hard questions about the developer's compliance record on what is billed as the largest office-to-residential conversion in New York City history.
The building at 235 East 42nd Street, the former Pfizer headquarters, a 1970s-era office tower near Grand Central Terminal, was being converted into more than 1,600 luxury apartments when workers discovered the damage early on July 7. Firefighters arrived around 8 a.m. City officials evacuated seven surrounding buildings, including a school, diplomatic offices, and hotels. By Tuesday evening, Fox News reported that the building had been stabilized and some evacuation orders were lifted.
No injuries were reported. But FDNY drone footage revealed significant internal damage, and the developer's own account of what went wrong only deepens the concern.
The trouble centered on the 21st floor. Two structural columns buckled and floors sagged, visible evidence of a building under stress it was not designed to bear. AP News reported that cracks and sagging were detected alongside the buckled columns, and structural engineers warned the damaged columns are likely not repairable. They will need to be fully removed and replaced, with experts cautioning that damage may extend beyond what is currently visible.
The New York Post reported that support beams began buckling at approximately 8:11 a.m., and all construction workers were evacuated without injury. A steamfitter from Local 638, Cliff Johnsen, offered a blunt assessment of what he saw.
"The I-beams are bending like cigarettes in there, which is super dangerous. At that point, you need to add more steel, and they obviously didn't add the right amount of steel. So the north side of that building is crumbling."
That is not the language of a minor hiccup.
Just The News reported that sagging extended between the 21st and 26th floors, with the two buckled columns located between floors 21 and 22. Six nearby buildings and a school with approximately 400 children were evacuated as a precaution. City officials confirmed the building continued to move even after the initial evacuation.
Nathan Berman, founder of MetroLoft, the developer behind the conversion, told The Wall Street Journal that additional weight from expanding the building's upper floors likely contributed to the damage. The project involved widening the top 15 floors of the existing structure, a significant engineering undertaking on a tower built more than half a century ago.
Berman insisted the building remains overwhelmingly sound:
"Ninety-five percent of the building, the structure is sound and intact. There is no way that this corner of a small extension all of a sudden topples this building."
Fire Chief John Esposito offered a more measured view, saying officials were concerned about the possibility of a localized structural failure rather than a full collapse of the steel-framed tower. That distinction matters, but it does not erase the fact that columns designed to hold up a building bent under loads the developer's own project imposed.
Investigators are still trying to determine exactly why the two columns buckled. No independent engineering authority has publicly confirmed or disputed Berman's claim that 95 percent of the structure is sound.
The structural emergency did not arrive without warning signs. The Washington Examiner reported that the building has 22 total violations on record, with $39,000 in outstanding penalties. The Department of Buildings filed a complaint against the developers for conducting excavations beyond approved construction plans, a fact that should concern anyone who wonders whether corners were cut.
The New York Post's reporting added another layer: MetroLoft's general contractor, 235 GC LLC, received at least seven construction safety enforcement violations between July and December 2025, with more than $30,000 in penalties paid. A separate violation from last August involved a metal panel falling from the building.
An unnamed union representative drew attention to the developer's outstanding violations and safety oversight. The specific criticism was not quoted in detail, but the pattern speaks clearly enough on its own. Seven safety violations in six months. Outstanding penalties. Unauthorized excavations. And now, columns bending under loads the project itself created.
NYC Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani held a news conference Tuesday evening and said the building had stopped shifting:
"We've been monitoring the building for many hours and have not seen any movement."
Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the situation "extremely serious" earlier in the day as engineers conducted floor-by-floor inspections. He later acknowledged the ongoing nature of the crisis.
"Every few minutes we are looking at a new assessment of the structure and of the possibilities and the options that we have in front of us."
Mamdani also noted that officials had "witnessed additional movement in one of the compromised columns" after arriving on scene, a detail that underscores how fluid and dangerous the situation was for much of the day.
Breitbart reported that crews worked overnight to install temporary shoring on floors 18 through 23, with additional supports planned from the roof down to the ninth floor. Even after the building was declared stable, surrounding streets and four nearby buildings remained under evacuation orders. The mayor later said the building was stable but added that officials would "continue to prioritize the safety of all in that immediate area."
Contractors began shoring up the damaged area after city officials gave the go-ahead. Repair work is expected to continue and could disrupt the surrounding Midtown corridor, one of the most heavily trafficked areas in Manhattan, steps from Grand Central Terminal, the Chrysler Building, and United Nations headquarters.
This was supposed to be a showcase project. The conversion of the former Pfizer headquarters into more than 1,600 apartments, including, per the Washington Examiner, more than 400 affordable housing units, was touted as the largest office-to-residential conversion in New York City history. The project was expected to be completed by 2027.
Now it is a showcase of something else: the gap between ambition and accountability. A developer added 11 floors and widened the top 15 stories of a 1970s office tower, then acknowledged the added weight "likely contributed" to structural columns buckling. The building's contractor racked up at least seven safety violations in the months before the emergency. The city's own Department of Buildings flagged unauthorized excavations. And yet the work continued, until the steel started bending.
Structural engineers have warned that the damage may extend beyond the visible buckled columns. The full scope of what went wrong inside 235 East 42nd Street is not yet known. The investigation is ongoing, and the questions that remain unanswered are significant: What did city inspectors know, and when? Were the unauthorized excavations connected to the structural failure? Was the engineering plan for the upper-floor expansion adequate? Who signed off on it?
Roughly 400 schoolchildren were evacuated from a nearby building because of decisions made inside this project. Hotel guests, diplomatic staff, and residents of surrounding buildings were displaced. The Midtown corridor was thrown into disruption. And the developer's response is to assure everyone that 95 percent of the building is fine.
When the I-beams are bending like cigarettes, five percent is more than enough to matter. The people who live and work in the shadow of that tower deserve answers, and they deserve them before the next column starts to buckle.
