NYC Orders Pause of Construction on Damaged Midtown Office Tower
New York City building regulators said the conversion of a Midtown Manhattan office tower into residences must be paused while officials investigate what caused columns inside the building to fail, leading to a massive emergency response that briefly shut down one of the busiest corridors of the city.
The Department of Buildings issued a partial stop-work order to halt all non-emergency construction at the site, where steel columns buckled on the 21st floor, causing structural damage on multiple others levels of the building.
“Stop all construction activities on entire jobsite except for emergency work,” said the order, which was posted on the Department of Buildings website.
The conversion’s developers downplayed the extent of the problems in the building and vowed to bring the project to completion on schedule. Metro Loft, which is redeveloping the property with David Werner Real Estate Investments, said the structural problem was confined to a small section of the project, affecting about 30 planned apartments.
“We are in the process of addressing the issue and will fully rebuild this portion of the building in tandem with ongoing construction,” Metro Loft said in a statement. “We remain on schedule, and this work will not delay delivery of the building as it is such a small portion of the project.”
The high-rise, at 235 East 42nd Street, not far from Grand Central Terminal and numerous other large corporate offices, apartment buildings and hotels, is being converted into about 1,600 rental apartments, including roughly 400 affordable units — making it one of the largest office-to-residential conversion projects underway in the US.
The former Pfizer Inc. headquarters building has shown no additional movement since Tuesday morning, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a news conference on Wednesday, as crews continued installing steel shoring throughout the 37-story tower to reinforce weakened floors. Temporary supports have been completed on floors 18 through 23, with work continuing toward the roof and down to the ninth floor, Mamdani said.
“As soon as we answer the emergency questions around safety in this moment, we are going to be conducting a full investigation as to how we got to this point,” Mamdani said. The problems were “clearly a breakdown in that process,” he said, but “not a necessary consequence of an office-to-residential conversion.”
The project is part of a broader effort to transform older office buildings in Midtown Manhattan into housing as developers respond to high office vacancy rates and a shortage of apartments.
Despite the incident, Mamdani said that he still sees conversion as part of the answer to New York City’s housing crisis. He said the city will conduct a full investigation to determine the root cause, which is not necessarily a consequence of the conversion.
New York City officials began reopening streets and allowing people back into nearby buildings on Wednesday morning. The so-called frozen zone closed to vehicle and pedestrian traffic was reduced to 42nd and 43rd Streets between Second and Third Avenues, and five buildings in the area remain under full or partial evacuation orders.
“Right now we have been in a consistent, stable, safe situation,” Commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings Ahmed Tigani said in a press conference late Tuesday.
Earlier Wednesday evening @NYC_Buildings Commissioner @AhmedTigani54 gave a press briefing on the ongoing stabilization efforts at the former Pfizer building in Midtown Manhattan, and related updates on the associated street closures and building evacuations. pic.twitter.com/7fQaCpvD4u
— Department of Buildings (@NYC_Buildings) July 8, 2026
Top Photo: 235 East 42nd Street after reports of falling debris during an office-to-residential conversion in New York on July 7.