Manhattan skyscraper evacuated after structural columns buckle, is 'stabilized' amid collapse fears

A Manhattan high-rise under construction that was in danger of collapsing was stabilized late Tuesday and some evacuations of nearby buildings were lifted.

“We watched the building for many hours and we didn’t see any movement,” Ahmed Tigani, commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings, said at a news conference Tuesday.

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“We were able to get to the 21st floor to check the work being done and felt confident that the emergency work would stabilize the situation,” Tigani’s report quoted him as saying.

Evacuation

During Tuesday morning’s rush hour, emergency crews evacuated a busy block of Manhattan street after structural columns buckled inside a skyscraper under construction, officials said.

The developer insisted that there is no danger of the entire building collapsing. But city officials cautioned that the situation remains serious as they work to determine whether the structure is safe enough to move in for remedial work.

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“Two structural columns broke, in addition to numerous cracks and collapsed floors. The building remains unstable. Since arriving at the scene, we have witnessed further movement in one of the attacked columns,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

A high-rise building under construction, which the New York Fire Department says remains at risk of collapsing after two of its support columns broke, is seen in a video still image in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., July 7, 2026. FDNY/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE WAS SUPPLIED(via REUTERS)

Nearby hotels, businesses, apartments and a school were evacuated and streets were closed as a precaution as police and firefighters swarmed the area, AFP correspondents saw.

At night, residents were allowed back into several of the seven buildings that had been evacuated as a precaution.

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Several buildings in the area are still under evacuation orders as stabilization work continues in the coming days, CNN reported.

The mayor said New Yorkers will be able to “go back into these buildings when we’re absolutely sure they’re safe for them.”

what exactly happened

The scene unfolded after columns were spotted Tuesday morning at the 1970s building, which is being converted into luxury apartments, the Associated Press reports.

Construction workers at the site and people in nearby buildings – including a school, diplomatic offices and several hotels – on a busy downtown corridor were evacuated after firefighters were called to the scene around 8am.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani described it as an “extremely serious situation”.

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“City officials who went floor by floor later found no further movement of the damaged columns, giving local contractors the green light to proceed with emergency repairs,” his office said.

On Tuesday evening, workers could be seen repairing the damage inside the gleaming glass and steel high-rise.

That work is expected to continue, hitting a section of Manhattan near the famous Grand Central train station, which is a hub for commuters and metro residents as well as tourists.

Fears of collapse prompted an evacuation order

The building, which is the former headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, is located just down the street from New York City icons such as the Chrysler Building and the United Nations headquarters.

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The former headquarters of drug giant Pfizer, near Grand Central Station and the United Nations headquarters, is being converted from offices to apartments as part of an overhaul of the 37-story tower.

Leila Bozorg, one of Mamdani’s deputy mayors, said it was “encouraging” that the building did not appear to be moving as officials entered and passed the damaged floors on their way to the 37th floor – the top floor – of the building.

From the street below, a badly bent structural column could be seen through a large glass window on the 21st floor. Firefighters, who also released images of the pole, said they also found numerous cracks and sagging floors.

Asked if there was concern about a collapse, Fire Chief John Esposito said the way the steel-framed building is built, “it wouldn’t be a total collapse, it would be more of a localized collapse.”

Nearby buildings and streets remained evacuated for most of the day, including a school and the Israeli consulate across the street. The former Pfizer building itself was empty at the time, except for construction workers.

Ramesh Yallappa, a tourist who was among those evacuated from a nearby hotel, said he initially feared it was a fire at the hotel when an immediate evacuation was ordered on Tuesday morning.

“We were really scared at that point,” he said.

The developer says that the new addition has led to corruption

With more than 1,600 units, the project is the largest office-to-residential conversion in the city’s history, according to developers. Gensler, the architecture firm leading the project, says on its website that it is transforming a pair of 1970s office buildings by adding more than a dozen floors and redesigning an adjacent tower.

Buildings department records show the city fined the project for several safety violations, including glass and metal falling from the building, along with an incident where a worker fell from a ladder.

Spokesmen for Gensler and MetroLoft, the project’s developer, did not return messages seeking comment.

But MetroLoft stressed in a statement to The New York Times that the building itself was not in danger of collapsing and that no debris had fallen from the building.

Nathan Berman, founder of MetroLoft, told The Wall Street Journal that the damage was likely caused by the added weight caused by the expansion of the building’s upper 15 floors. The two columns that buckled may not have been properly braced, he told the newspaper.

“Why these particular two columns and nothing else? We don’t know,” Berman told the paper. “We’re investigating.

He guaranteed that the building’s integrity had not been compromised.

“Ninety-five percent of the building is structurally sound and intact,” Berman told the paper. “There is no way that this corner of the small extension will suddenly topple this building.

Experts say more extensive repairs are likely to be needed

Emily Guglielmo, a civil engineer based in California, said the bent columns likely cannot be repaired and will have to be removed and replaced.

“A lot of these things — the cracking, the buckling, the buckling — those elements probably can’t be saved,” she said.

Replacing the pillars will require careful analysis and repairs will be expensive, experts said.

A short-term solution is to reinforce the structure and floors, said Abi Aghayere, a professor of civil engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Underpinning involves the installation of four-legged scaffolding to temporarily support the load the structure is meant to carry until the columns can be replaced, Aghayere said.

Yi Bao, an associate professor of civil engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said the building could be damaged beyond the buckling columns, which could force the load to be redistributed to different parts of the building.

Ed Miller, an area resident, said he walks under the building’s scaffolding several times a day but finds other ways home.

“The building was pretty old,” said Miles Grant, who said he worked in the building. “It definitely needed a lot of work to make it habitable.