The former Pfizer headquarters under construction at 235 E. 42nd St., where two support columns buckled Tuesday and upper floors sagged high above Midtown Manhattan, was stabilized late Tuesday after emergency shoring, city officials said.

Structural engineers, however, said the damaged sections will need to be cut out and part of the building partially demolished before construction resumes.

As of Wednesday, some nearby evacuation orders had been lifted while others remained in place.

Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani told reporters Tuesday evening that jacks and new steel had been installed on the 21st floor and that he was confident the emergency stabilization was holding. City officials went floor by floor and found no additional column movement after shoring began.

The 1970s-era tower is being converted into roughly 1,600 apartments, which would be the largest office-to-residential conversion in city history, according to project architect Gensler.

Developer Metro Loft Management, run by Nathan Berman with partner David Werner, is widening the tower's upper floors as part of the conversion.

Berman told The Wall Street Journal that the added weight from widening the top 15 floors, beginning with the 22nd, most likely triggered the failure and that the two buckled columns may not have been properly reinforced.

"This additional load that we put on those floors caused those two particular columns to collapse," Berman said. He added that the tower is not compromised and that 95% of the structure remains sound.

Independent engineers said the damaged sections cannot simply be pushed back into place.

Emily Guglielmo, a principal at Martin/Martin, told the New York Post that cracked, deflected, and sagging elements "are probably not salvageable" and will have to be removed and replaced, adding that a partial demolition is likely.

Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer who served on the federal team investigating the World Trade Center collapse, said the buckled columns are now carrying only about one-third of their design load, leaving surrounding beams and columns "highly stressed." He estimated stabilization should be finished within about a week before more extensive repairs begin.

The project already had a rocky safety record.

The Real Deal, citing Department of Buildings records, reported seven construction safety violations in 2025, most of which were classified as immediately hazardous and resolved through certificates of correction without payment.

Newsweek reported that the site has 22 violations dating to 2020, 13 of them still active, with about $39,000 in unpaid penalties. The DOB opened a new complaint on Tuesday, accusing the developer of constructing contrary to approved plans, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said an "exhaustive investigation" will follow.