City officials received complaints about unsafe conditions at the Midtown tower at risk of collapse as far back as spring of 2025, The City Reporter has learned, as officials scramble to secure the area spanning a busy stretch of Manhattan near Grand Central Station.
The office tower at 235 E. 42nd Street was undergoing construction for conversion to a residential building, when on Tuesday morning the city’s Department of Buildings received reports of bricks falling from the construction site. The site was evacuated after inspectors discovered two structural columns on the 21st floor had buckled.
Dramatic video from inside the building obtained by Pix 11 shows two columns failing as workers milled around before evacuating the construction site.
“This is an extremely serious situation, and I am thankful to our first responders for quickly arriving at the site and to New Yorkers for reacting calmly and with urgency,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. All workers are accounted for and there are no injuries, he added. Officials also evacuated nearby towers and a school with 400 children, and shut down traffic on 42nd and 43rd street between First and Third Avenues while the DOB and the Fire Department investigated.
At a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, John Esposito, the chief of department at the Fire Department, said the “box beams — the steel beams — had started to bend” when fire officials entered the building to inspect it. The FDNY set up a “frozen zone and collapse zone” as they detected continued movement and shifting, in centimeters, at the building.
“It does mean it is not yet stable, it is still a serious and very dangerous situation,” Esposito added. The risk of collapse was still there — although the structure of the building means “it would not be a total collapse, it would be more of a localized collapse, but that remains our concern as we move.”
An image on a worker’s phone shows a buckling structural support in the rear of an upper floor in the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown, and bent steel studs in the foreground, July 7, 2026. Credit: Ben Fracktenberg/The City Reporter
Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said inspectors “have seen both buckling and floor conditions that are impaired.” The building went through “extensive, exhaustive reviews” as part of its conversion to residential apartments, he said.
Additional buildings were evacuated by police early Tuesday afternoon as onlookers stared up and the unstable office tower in the heart of Manhattan.
Safety Violations
Records obtained by The City Reporter show that the potential disaster at 235 E 42nd Street, the former Pfizer headquarters located two blocks east of the Chrysler Building, was not the first time officials learned of unsafe conditions at that job site. Since May 2025, the city Department of Buildings has responded to numerous reports at the tower, ranging from debris falling onto the sidewalk below to at least two back-to-back worker injuries in November and December.
The buildings department has hit the general contractor, Robert Travis of 235 GC LLC, with seven violations and $32,530 in penalties since last July, primarily for construction safety problems and failure to maintain a safe site. Travis’ attorney, Lisa Black, did not respond to a phone call and message from The City Reporter.
Representatives for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Over the last year there have been a series of complaints about objects falling off the building into the street below, starting on May 13, 2025, when a worker alleges he was struck by a falling object, according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Workers, bystanders and firefighters gaze up at the Pfizer building in Midtown after it was evacuated and at risk of collapse, July 7, 2026. Credit: Ben Fracktenberg/The City Reporter
The pattern continued on July 21 with a window crashing down from the 8th floor to a sidewalk shed; the DOB issued a stop work order. Then a month later a metal panel plummeted from the 33rd floor to the sidewalk. The inspectors noted that “the debris and the scene of the incident was tampered with,” and another stop work order ensued.
A 311 caller reported that welders on the first floor were sending sparks to the street. By the time the DOB inspector showed up a month later, they reported no violations.
On Oct. 9 a caller reported a “large item fell and broke through five floors and almost hit someone.” Pieces of concrete “are constantly falling from above,” the complaint alleged. DOB showed up a day later and reported no violations.
That Nov. 3, the site safety manager informed DOB that a worker had been injured and an ambulance summoned. That day inspectors discovered construction equipment on site that were not listed in the job’s site safety plan, and a worker, Milton Toro, later filed suit alleging that another worker had dropped a jackhammer on him.
The Pfizer building in Midtown Manhattan was at risk of collapse, officials said on July 7, 2026. The building, located near Grand Central Station, was evacuated. Credit: Ben Fracktenberg/The City Reporter
The next month DOB issued a violation after a worker fell six feet off an improperly secured ladder while dismantling a crane. DOB later cited the contractor for failing to notify them about this incident, and Victor Velsasco Aldavaca, a worker for the demolition subcontractor on site, A-1 Specialized Co., sued the general contractor, alleging a failure to maintain a safe environment.
In March a 311 caller alleged a worker was using a leaf blower on the roof of the building to blow debris into the street, and in April another caller stated “debris is falling from high heights.” On March 10 another worker, Dixon Renan, alleged he was injured when he fell from a ladder, according to a lawsuit he filed.
Just before 8 a.m. Tuesday the FDNY responded to a call about an “unstable building” where “two columns buckled on the 21st floor” and where bricks were “falling from the building.” The Department of Buildings shut down the job and ordered the building evacuated.
Beams ‘Bending Like Cigarettes’
José Osvaldo Becerra, a construction worker at the adjacent building on 219 East 42nd St., which is part of the conversion project, said the contractor ordered him and the site’s more than 200 workers out at around 8:30 a.m.
“We were all ordered to evacuate, and that’s when the commotion started,” he told The City Reporter in Spanish. He and another worker, Cecilia Pulla, left their belongings behind as they evacuated the building. “God knows how I’m going to get home,” said Pulla.
“We don’t know when we’ll be allowed back in, but my keys, my wallet — I left all that in there,” Becerra said.
Cliff Johnson, a representative for Steamfitters Local 638, which was performing fire protection work at the site, described the damage to a scrum of reporters this morning: “The I-beams are bending like cigarettes in there, which is super dangerous.”
He said his members witnessed the bent beams, as well as cracking windows and falling concrete from the roof onto the floor below before ev.
“They chose profit over safety and put my members, as well as every construction worker over here, in jeopardy,” he said of the site’s contractor.
The residential conversion at the 33-story building has been described as the largest of its kind in New York City, led by David Werner and Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft Management. Metro Loft reached a deal in March 2024 to convert the tower into 1,500 rental units and have received loans totaling more than $700 million to finance the project.
Metro Loft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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