Midtown Tower Near Grand Central Emptied Over Fears of Partial Collapse

Emergency crews cleared out a high-rise in Midtown Manhattan close to Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday morning after city authorities determined the structure could suffer a localized collapse.

The New York Fire Department said the alarm was first raised at 7:57am, when a caller reported bricks falling at 235 East 42nd Street, a building that sits between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue. Officials later clarified that no evidence of fallen bricks was actually found at the site.

The tower dates to the 1960s and for decades served as the corporate headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which relocated to The Spiral in Hudson Yards in 2018.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference held near the site, New York City Mayor Mamdani warned that the building "remains unstable" and urged residents to keep clear of the surrounding blocks.

According to the FDNY, the 37-story structure was sagging between its 21st and 26th floors, and first responders observed that two columns had buckled between the 21st and 22nd floors.

"Since arriving on scene, we have witnessed additional movement in one of the compromised columns," Mamdani said. "This is an extremely serious situation, and I am thankful to our first responders for quickly arriving at the site and to New Yorkers for reacting calmly and with urgency."

The mayor confirmed earlier accounts that nobody was hurt, and that every construction worker inside the building made it out safely once the structural problems came to light. The property is midway through a conversion into an apartment complex of more than 1,600 units, a project officials said had been scheduled to finish by 2027.

Roughly 130 fire and EMS personnel were mobilized to get people out of the building, and six neighboring buildings were emptied as a precaution, fire officials said. At an earlier, unrelated press conference, Mamdani noted that one of the evacuated neighboring buildings was a school holding about 400 children.

The New York Police Department shut down traffic from 40th to 45th Streets between 1st and 3rd Avenues, according to the mayor.

Asked by reporters how grave the danger was, Fire Chief John M. Esposito said the building's continued movement remained his chief worry.

"We have specialized tools that we can watch the building from and see movement even in centimeters or fractions of an inch. And since we arrived on the scene and put that in place, we have seen continual movement," Esposito said.

The chief did, however, push back on the prospect of the entire tower coming down. "It's a steel frame building. So it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse," he said.

Staff from the city's Department of Buildings were on scene and deployed drones to survey the tower. Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said an investigation had been opened into what caused the columns to buckle.

"We feel like the next step is making sure we can get onto that 21st floor to add additional emergency trusses to spread that load," Tigani said.

Officials emphasized that conditions at the site were shifting minute by minute.