• An under-construction Midtown Manhattan building that was evacuated after structural columns buckled remains unstable, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said, describing the situation as “extremely serious.”
• On-site contractors are moving forward with the installation of temporary shoring to stabilize the high-rise, a city official briefed on the operation told CNN, with additional stabilization work to be done throughout Tuesday evening and coming days. Officials are assessing the surrounding area to determine potential changes to street closures or repopulation of evacuated buildings.
• A New York City Fire chief said there is concern about the possibility of a “localized collapse,” but added the building is constructed in such a way that a total collapse is not possible.
• The building, located on East 42nd Street, is the former headquarters for Pfizer and is currently being converted into apartments. No injuries have been reported, and all workers have been accounted for, FDNY said.
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The New York City Department of Buildings and FDNY are conducting building-by-building assessments of the surrounding area to determine whether street closures can be adjusted and when evacuated buildings can be reoccupied, according to a city official briefed on the operation.
Fruit vendor reacts to unstable high-rise
1:36 • Source: CNN
Fruit vendor reacts to unstable high-rise
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Some travelers were frustrated by the lack of alternative accommodations after being evacuated from hotels near an unstable building in Midtown Manhattan earlier today.
Atish Parmar NYC building evacuation
0:32 • Source: CNN
Atish Parmar NYC building evacuation
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The owner and developer of a midtown Manhattan building that was evacuated Tuesday for reports of structural buckling are being sued by a construction worker who suffered a “grave injury” at the site last year, according to court records.
On September 30, 2025, Wilmer Cabrera Rojas was working at the 42nd Street building when he fell after wood he was standing on “gave way,” causing him “serious and permanent injures,” according to a civil suit filed in New York State court.
Rojas filed the suit in November, which is still active.
The suit was brought against Metro Loft, the building’s developer, and 235 Fee Owner LLC, the site owner, among multiple defendants, including limited liability companies. 235 Fee Owner was also the subject of a New York City Department of Buildings complaint filed Tuesday accusing the company of performing construction contrary to previously approved plans.
On-site contractors can move forward with the installation of temporary shoring to stabilize the high-rise under construction in Midtown Manhattan, a city official briefed on the operation told CNN.
Regular monitoring of the damaged section of the building is ongoing, and there has been no additional movement of the damaged columns, the official said.
The emergency shoring is a measure to stabilize the building, and additional stabilization work will be done throughout Tuesday evening and coming days.
Jason Polanco, managing director at Manhattan Realty Group, arrived at the office with his team this morning before they were told to evacuate because of the nearby unstable high-rise building.
New York City is in the throes of a residential housing boom, adding more housing units in new buildings in Manhattan than at any time since 1965, New York City Planning Department data shows.
However, the surge in development comes at a time when the construction industry in and outside of New York is facing mounting pressures.
Years of high inflation have raised costs and contributed to elevated interest rates, making financing more expensive; last year’s wave of tariffs increased the costs of critical materials such as steel; and an aging workforce combined with policy shifts toward reduced immigration have crimped the labor supply.
The New York Building Congress, a construction trade organization, has recommended expanding workforce development programs and creating a national “critical infrastructure” H-1B designation for US-educated and US-trained international workers as a way to help combat the worker shortage.
Construction-related employment in the New York City metro area still hasn’t bounced back from its pre-pandemic levels, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. In May, there were an estimated 386,200 workers in the mining, logging and construction industry. That’s below the post-pandemic peak of 400,900 in July 2023.
A team of six people that entered the Midtown Manhattan building where columns started to buckle Tuesday is evaluating it floor-by-floor and has not reported further movement, said Leila Bozorg, deputy mayor for the city’s housing and planning.
Before 235 East 42nd Street was evacuated Tuesday after reports of structural buckling, multiple complaints were filed with the New York City Department of Buildings alleging falling objects and unsafe conditions. It’s unclear who filed the complaints.
“Want to report unsafe building demolition. Debris is falling from high heights,” an April complaint stated. Inspectors did not observe falling debris when they went to the building a day after the complaint was filed and found no violation was warranted, according to department records.
“Today a large item fell and broke through 5 floors and almost hit someone. There are gas machines without proper ventilation,” an October complaint stated. “Piece (sic) of concrete are constantly falling from above.” Like the October complaint, inspectors did not observe these conditions and did not find a violation was warranted.
Two other complaints from the past year mention falling objects with the same outcome from inspections.
The owner of the building did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Various bus routes throughout New York City have been delayed after an under-construction Midtown Manhattan building was evacuated, according to MTA service alerts.
M42 buses, which partially suspended service in both directions, are operating but remain delayed.
Northbound M101, M102 and M103 buses have been detoured and are stopping at the intersection before 3rd Ave at E 42nd St.
Southbound M15 buses are also detoured, while northbound buses are bypassing some stops along First Avenue.
Subway service from Grand Central Terminal has not been impacted at this time.
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The unstable Midtown high-rise is the location of a project to convert Pfizer’s old headquarters into apartments. It’s an ambitious architectural undertaking that is part of a trend of converting former offices to apartments.
The building conversion is being developed by Metro Loft and David Werner Real Estate Investments with architectural firm Gensler. The renovation focuses on adjoining buildings at 219 and 235 East 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, just by Grand Central Terminal.
The project includes building 19 new stories atop an existing 10-story structure at 219 East 42nd and “reconfiguring and recladding” the adjoining 33-story tower at 235 East 42nd, according to Gensler. It’s slated to be completed in 2027.
The planned building would include roughly 1,600 apartments, making it the largest office-to-apartment conversion project in New York City history, according to Gensler. About 25% of the planned apartments — 400 units — are slated to be affordable housing units.
Robert Fuller, a principal at Gensler, told Bloomberg in 2025: “It’s quite a bit of surgery,” referring to the Pfizer building conversion. “There’s just a lot of technical challenges and unique conditions from floor to floor. All those things collectively make this quite a unique endeavor and I would argue probably more challenging than any other one I can think of.”
These conversions can reinvent out-of-use buildings and create more housing in cities that are lacking in supply. Office-to-apartment conversions have ballooned in popularity since the Covid-19 pandemic ushered in hybrid and remote work, emptying many office spaces.
Metro Loft previously co-developed 25 Water Street in downtown Manhattan. That conversion transformed JPMorgan Chase’s old offices into 1,320 apartments.
Nathan Berman, founder at Metro Loft, told The New York Times in 2025 that converting old office buildings into apartments helps remove “the millions of feet of space that are essentially obsolete.”
“They can’t compete as office buildings anymore, and we’re taking them, sort of, out of the race,” he said.
Aerial images show the change to the former Pfizer building over a year.
The image on the left, captured March 11, 2025, shows the building before construction, and the image on the right, captured April 7, 2026, shows the building during construction as it was being converted into apartments.
The building is seen before the additions on March 11, 2025, and afterward on April 7, 2026. Nearmap
Unremarkable weather is in the immediate forecast at the high-rise site with routine summer storms possible later in the week.
It’s cloudy and largely dry with light winds in Manhattan this afternoon. Skies will gradually clear tonight into Wednesday and winds will remain light, around 5 to 10 mph.
Hit-or-miss thunderstorms are possible in the area later Thursday afternoon through Thursday evening but are not currently forecast to be intense or have damaging wind gusts. Winds are still likely to remain under 10 mph for the day, but slightly stronger isolated gusts are possible in any thunderstorm.
A similar chance for scattered thunderstorms is possible late Friday afternoon into Friday evening. Winds are still forecast to remain generally under 10 mph.
The Midtown Manhattan building that started to buckle Tuesday was the world headquarters for major pharmaceutical company Pfizer for more than 60 years.
Pfizer moved to the East 42nd Street building in 1961, when it began a decade of “substantial growth,” according to the company’s timeline. It later also occupied the building next door, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company was founded in 1849 by two cousins, Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart, in a red brick building in Brooklyn. It moved its headquarters to Lower Manhattan in 1868.
The drugmaker announced plans to sell its Midtown Manhattan headquarters in 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported. It signed a lease two years later to move to Hudson Yards to “provide our colleagues (with) a modern, state-of-the-art headquarters,” according to a company press release. Pfizer held a grand opening at its new Hudson Yards headquarters in April 2023.
Pfizer sold its 1.1-million-square-foot former headquarters at 219-235 East 42nd Street to David Werner, a real estate investor, in 2018 for $357 million, according to BKREA, a commercial brokerage company that handled the transaction.
CNN has reached out to Pfizer for comment about its former headquarters.
A team of six people is entering the building to assess the structural integrity of the 33-story high-rise to determine whether shoring efforts can safely begin, a New York City official told CNN.
The building has not moved for approximately 2 hours.
The team is comprised of representatives from NYC Department of Buildings’ construction safety, DOB engineering, New York City Fire Department FDNY and Collaborative Construction Management (the contractor).
The New York City Department of Buildings filed a complaint against the owner of the unstable Midtown Manhattan building today, accusing the owner of performing construction contrary to previously approved plans.
The complaint, filed against the owner, listed as 235 Fee Owner LLC, noted that “no support of excavation has been approved.”
The owner could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Buildings Department has assigned the complaint to the agency’s Construction Safety Enforcement team.
Metro Loft, the project’s developer, provided CNN an updated statement this afternoon, emphasizing that the building is not at risk of collapsing.
An attorney who represents the building owner and developer in connection with civil litigation involving the building said she had no comment and added that she was not authorized to speak on the matter.
This post has been updated with additional information.
Initial reports received by the FDNY of “bricks falling off the building” at the active construction site on East 42nd Street in Manhattan were not confirmed, New York City Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said.
Tigani called it an “example of how information changes over time.”
“The initial report that came in was about bricks falling off the building. When arriving, we did not see evidence of that,” he said.
With two of its columns buckled, the other beams and bracings throughout the high-rise building in Midtown Manhattan are now taking on more of the load, said Matthew Roblez, a structural engineer.
“The danger isn’t just on the outside where the buckling is visible; it’s on the inside where you have columns taking additional load to make up for that one,” he said in an interview on CNN News Central.
While a building is being renovated, the distribution of its weight is modified, according to Roblez. This means during construction like this, “buildings see more load than they’re ever going to see,” he said.
Officials said earlier today that the building is still moving and unstable, which means personnel are not yet able to enter to reinforce the compromised sections. FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito said because the building has a steel frame, it is at risk of a “localized collapse.”
A localized collapse is considered a collapse that is limited to a specific area of a building, an FDNY spokesperson told CNN. The opposite of a total “crumbling down of a structure,” the person said.
But a localized collapse is still considered serious because it means inspectors would need more time to assess the safety of the site and determine how to shore up the specific location and the building, the spokesperson said.
If there were a partial collapse, it would delay the process of shoring up the building, which has not even started yet, according to the FDNY.
Roblez said that hopefully “the redundancy of the interior columns will allow the building to stop moving.”