Buckled steel beams force evacuations at Midtown Manhattan tower

Buckled steel columns inside a 37-story tower at 235 East 42nd Street forced evacuations across Midtown East on Tuesday after workers found cracks in the former Pfizer headquarters and officials warned the structure could partially collapse. The building, now being converted from office space into apartments, sat unstable while engineers and first responders moved to shore up the site.

Construction workers first noticed the damage around 8 a.m., and the Fire Department received a call at 7:57 a.m. about the structural problem. Officials later said two support columns on the 21st floor had buckled and floors inside the building were sagging, leaving the tower at risk of further movement. Several nearby Midtown Manhattan blocks were cleared as a precaution, and some surrounding buildings were evacuated while crews worked to contain the danger.

The disruption spread through one of the city’s most crowded corridors, near Grand Central Terminal, the Chrysler Building and the United Nations headquarters, where even a localized structural emergency can ripple through traffic, transit access and pedestrian flow. The Department of Buildings and structural engineers remained on scene assessing the damage while temporary shoring was installed to prevent more shifting. City officials said the stabilization work was expected to continue into the night.

The episode drew added attention because the site is one of Manhattan’s major office-to-residential conversions, part of the broader push to repurpose aging commercial property after the pandemic weakened demand for traditional office space. It also raised fresh questions about oversight at a building that had already drawn safety scrutiny. Reporting indicated the general contractor had been fined more than $32,000 since July 2025 for construction-safety violations.

By Tuesday afternoon, the tower remained the focus of an active emergency response, with officials treating the building as unstable and surrounding blocks still affected by the precautionary evacuations. The incident underscored how quickly a single structural failure inside a redevelopment project can shut down a dense section of Midtown and put one of Manhattan’s busiest districts on alert.