The buckling beams were located between the 21st and 22nd floors of the building in Manhattan. Photo courtesy FDNY
Authorities evacuated a Manhattan office building Tuesday after construction workers observed multiple floors collapsing and bricks falling from the facade, city officials said.
Fire officials said they received calls around 8 a.m. about bricks falling from the structure on East 42nd Street. Photos from the outlet also appeared to show a beam or column separated from the building.
Workers observed cracks in the building and support beams buckling between the 21st and 22nd floor, the New York City Fire Department said. The workers self-evacuated the building, and officials evacuated nine buildings surrounding it, including the Kennedy International School.
FDNY Chief John Esposito said there were no injuries associated with the compromised building.
“It’s a very serious situation because the box beams — the steel beams — have started to bend and deflect from the weight,” he said in a statement on X. “We evacuated the building and started evacuations of surrounding buildings. The building has continued to move since we have been on the scene.”
The FDNY account on X shared photos of the structural compromise of the building.
Just before at 8 a.m. Tuesday, the FDNY received reports of a structural issue at an active construction site on East 42nd Street between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan. The call came in for reported issues at a 37-story building at 235 East 42nd Street that is currently… pic.twitter.com/NavUpNGAJE— FDNY (@FDNY) July 7, 2026
“I want to encourage New Yorkers to avoid the area,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Tuesday. “This is a minute-by-minute assessment.”
Cliff Jensen, a business agent for the Steamfitters Local 638 Union, told the Times that the builders on the project didn’t use enough steel to support new floors being added to the building.
The building was the former headquarters of Pfizer but it was being renovated into a new 1,600-unit apartment complex along with another building nearby, WABC-TV in New York City reported. Workers were in the process of adding 19 new floors to the original 10-story building. The second building was also being renovated.
The New York Times said the complex’s overhaul was part of an effort in Midtown Manhattan to repurpose empty office buildings into residential projects to battle the city’s housing shortage.
WABC reported the building received seven violations from the city between July 2025 and December 2025, resulting in more than $32,000 in fines. The city’s Department of Buildings filed a complaint Tuesday saying the buildings’ developers carried out excavations beyond what had originally been approved in construction plans.
