The New York City Fire Museum is still fuming over the construction of the new Disney headquarters across the street.
The city-owned organization filed a summons in Manhattan state Supreme Court Friday alleging that Disney and its contractors caused excessive vibrations when building the recently opened 7 Hudson Square complex and as a result have caused “significant structural damage” to the museum’s Beaux-Arts property.
The museum, at 278 Spring St., has been closed since May 2024. That month employees say they felt the building shake and evacuated the site, a former firehouse completed in 1904. A note about the closure on the museum’s website and attached to a door at the property attributes the shaking to “crane operations on Spring Street.”
Also named as a defendant in the lawsuit are two construction companies that apparently helped build Disney’s 1.2 million-square-foot headquarters, global companies Skanska and Lendlease Construction.
The museum is seeking at least $5.9 million for the supposed damages, according to the filing, which is not yet a full-on lawsuit and so was not accompanied by the typical complaint that might shed more light on what happened.
Spokeswomen for Skanska and Disney did not immediately have comments, and an email sent to the press office for Lendlease was not returned by press time.
But Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Laws Department, said officials are currently in negotiations with Disney to possibly settle the issue without there having to be a trial. “This filing protects the city’s rights while we work with Disney and its insurers to determine whether we can resolve this matter without further litigation,” he told Crain’s.
A 19-story, full-block site between Varick and Hudson streets that opened in early December after five years of construction, 7 Hudson Square sits on land the Walt Disney Co. purchased from Trinity Church in 2019 for $650 million, based on the city register.
Packed with offices, shops and production facilities, the building also houses the studio for talk show The View. Its official name is the Robert A. Iger Building, for the CEO of Disney, which also owns the network ABC.
Opened in 1988, the museum, meanwhile, owns a collection with items that date back to the late 1700s, including painted leather buckets, early 20th-century fire engines and modern-day rescue tools. It also offers fire-safety classes in conjunction with the city’s Fire Department.
The nonprofit had net assets of $524,000 in 2022, according to its Form 990 tax return from that year, the most recent on file. That amount was down slightly from 2021, when its net assets totaled $576,000, the filing shows.
Disney’s market capitalization, on the other hand, is around $177 billion.
