Blocked Streets, Evacuations After Steel Beams Buckle at Midtown Tower
Steel beams buckled at an under-construction tower forcing mass evacuations on July 7. Contractors installed emergency shoring on floors nine through the roof by week’s end but street closures and a full vacate order for other nearby buildings remained in effect.
| 10 Jul 2026 | 02:41
Workers installed temporary support beams inside the construction project where steel beams buckled and floors sagged on July 7. By July 10, temporary beams on floors nine through the roof of the 37-story building. (
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FDNY members wait outside the building at 235 E. 42nd St. on July 7 after construction workers spotted buckling steel beams and sagging floors that triggered a mass evacuation of nine midtown buildings. (
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A resident of the frozen zone in a dispute with an NYPD officer after being told he cannot return home. Nine buildings in the area were forced to evacuate over fears of a potential building collapse. (
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Workers can be seen inside the tower at 235 E. 42nd St. as they work to shore up the building after steel beams buckled on July 7. (
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Union members bring out an inflatable rat on July 8 to protest non-union contractors working at 235 E. 42nd St. which where a building under renovation was damaged when steel beams buckled and floors sagged. (
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A woman who was forced to evacuate pulls a suit case near the site of a damaged building at 235 E. 42nd St. on July 7 (
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Cross town buses were still being turned as the street in front of the damaged building at 235 E. 42nd St. remained closed to traffic on July 8, a day after steel beams buckled causing several floors to collapse. (
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The Carpenters Union stationed a truck with the sign “Shame on Metro Loft” at Second Ave. and E. 43rd St. on July 8 to call attention to the developer who is converting an office tower to residential housing with a largely non-union workforce. (
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani addresses the press at the scene of the former Pfizer HQ where there was a partial collapse of several floors in the 37-story building that is being converted to residential housing. (
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Press gathers on Third Avenue while building workers take questions. (
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By Thursday, July 9, traffic was being allowed to pass in front of the stricken building (right) on East 42nd Street but traffic was still blocked on East 43rd Street, on the side of building closest to the buckled steel beams. (
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Anthony Williamson (left), business agent and executive board member of the Laborers’ Intenational Union, blasted developer Metro Loft for using non-unionized contractors on the site of the damaged 235 E. 42nd St. building. (
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The frozen zone was shrinking around the stricken building at an under construction tower East 42nd Street where buckling steel beams and sagging floors on July 7 had forced a mass evacuation and shut down for 12 city blocks.
Some people were being allowed back into some of the buildings, but a half dozen buildings near the stricken building at 235 E. 42nd St. remained under a full or partial vacate order by July 10. East 43rd St. remained closed even as traffic was allowed to start passing on E. 42nd Street between Second and Third Avenues by July 9.
Two visitors from Scotland, Sally Grant and Margaret Clark, were among those blocked from returning to the evacuated Hampton Inn on. East 43rd St.
They told the Associated Press that they came to see Bon Jovi perform at Madison Square Garden on July 7 but were forced to evacuate.
“They could have given us five minutes to grab our belongings, you know, instead of just saying, ‘Everybody out, everybody out,’” Clark told AP. “We’ve been left with nothing. We slept in the streets last night. The police wouldn’t help us. It’s been awful. Absolutely it’s ruined our holiday.”
A full vacate orders remained in effect on July 10 for the former Pfizer HQ at 235 E. 42nd St. as well as the Hampton Inn Grand Central at 231 E. 43rd St., an Episcopal Church at 815 Second Ave.; the Kennedy International School at 225 E. 43rd which was running a summer camp for 400 students in grades K-5; and a partial vacate order effecting the Japanese Restaurant Yakiniku Toraji (but not the United Nations offices in the same building) at 217 E. 43rd St.
The DOB said that as of July 10, temporary shoring has been installed from the ninth floor to the top floor of the 37-story building which is in the process of converting office space into 1,500 residential apartments and is the largest commercial-to-residential conversion underway in the city.
The drama began unfolding just before 8:00 a.m. on July 7th, when the FDNY received a call regarding structural issues at the active construction site at 235 East 42nd Street, a 1970s era building that was once the HQ of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, sitting directly across from the former Daily News Building and the current home of WPIX.
Based on video evidence and confirmation by FDNY and Mayor Zohran Mamdani who raced to the scene on day one, the structure’s compromise was located on the 21st floor, where two structural columns near the northwest corner of the tower had twisted and bent under the 11-story addition made to the top of the 37-story building. This failure led to cracked, sagging floors and buckling metal beams.
The former HQ of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is the site of the largest office to residential conversion in the city, with plans for 1,600 luxury apartments, a rooftop swimming pool, a fitness center and ground floor retail.
“It’s not supposed to happen; columns are not supposed to bend like that,” said Kassey Diaz, a construction worker who was working on the building’s conversion at the time, remarked to Straus News.
Around 3:30 p.m. on July 7, the deputy mayor Leila Bozorg spoke to the press just outside the barricades, sharing that a team of six surveyors had entered the building, taking the elevator to the 17th floor, beginning an “exhaustive investigation,” assessing each floor to finalize plans to reinforce the damaged floors.
“The building has not moved for several hours,” said Bozorg, who also mentioned that she was grateful for the cooperation of residents within a twelve block radius from First Ave to Third Ave. and East 40th to East 45th Street on day one.
The building in the Grand Central Business District was sold for $375 million in 2018 as Pfizer moved its HQ to Hudson Yards.
Andrew Rudansy, a spokesman for the D.O.B., shared that May 15th was the last time city inspectors were in the building. “Our inspectors did not find any unsafe or illegal conditions during these site visits,” he said.
David Werner, the CEO of MetroLoft, the developer in charge of the project said in a statement: “First and foremost, we want to thank the FDNY, NYPD, and DOB for their quick response...We’re thankful there were no injuries, and as the DOB 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.”
But the blowback is already gathering steam, fueled in part because the biggest residential conversion project underway in the city is being built largely by non-union contractors. Indeed, by the morning of July 8, a truck commissioned by the Carpenters Union had pulled up to the intersection at East 43rd Street and Second Ave., two blocks from the stricken building, with the words in red: “Crime Scene.” Later in the morning, the sign was changed to read: “Shame on Metro Loft,”
Anthony Williamson, business agent and executive board member of of Local 79 of the Laborers’ International Union also raised the non-union aspect. “This is not typical of construction in New York City,” he said. “This is the contractor cutting corners. This is corporate greed. This is profit over people. It never would have happened if the developer used skilled craft people.”
At a press conference the day after the near disaster, Mamdani said he still supports the relaxed regulations under the City Council’s “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” to promote office-to-residential projects such as this one.
“Yes, I do continue to consider the conversion of office space into residential space as part of our answer to the housing crisis. I also consider that we have to do so safely and in a way that is fully accountable. And so as soon as we answer the emergency questions around safety in this moment, we are going to be conducting a full investigation as to how we got to this point.”