By Joseph Ax<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) – A high-rise building under construction in midtown Manhattan that had been at risk of \u200ccollapse appears to have stabilized, New York City Mayor Zohran \u200cMamdani said on Wednesday, a day after two support columns buckled and forced the evacuation \u200bof a half-dozen nearby buildings.<\/p>\n
The 37-story office building, which is being converted into residential apartments, is located on East 42nd Street, one block west of the United Nations and three blocks east of Grand Central Terminal.<\/p>\n
Temporary shoring and \u200cbeams have been installed \u2060on floors 18 to 23, and workers are adding more support to additional floors, Mamdani told reporters.<\/p>\n
“There has been \u2060no additional movement of the structure since yesterday morning,” the mayor said.<\/p>\n
The city’s fire department said it received a call just before 8 a.m. ET on \u200bTuesday about bricks \u200bfalling from the building. Emergency responders \u200bfound two columns had buckled \u200con the 21st and 22nd floors and that multiple floors were sagging.<\/p>\n
Neighboring buildings, including a school, were evacuated, and the busy thoroughfare of 42nd Street was closed down. Some of those buildings have been reopened, but four remain completely evacuated, while a fifth has a ground-floor restaurant that \u200cis still shuttered, Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
The building, which \u200bserved for decades as Pfizer’s corporate headquarters, is \u200bbeing converted into a \u200b1,600-unit apartment building due for completion in 2027, according to \u200cthe architectural firm Gensler’s website.<\/p>\n
Mamdani said \u200bhe remained supportive \u200bof converting office space into residences to help address the city’s housing affordability crisis. The city’s building department will conduct a “rigorous assessment” \u200bto ensure that the \u200chigh-rise is safe and compliant with all codes before any further \u200bconstruction work can proceed, he added.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing \u200bby Jesse Mesner-Hage and Mark Porter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Joseph Ax NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) – A high-rise building under construction in midtown Manhattan that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3955,3412,9,24,55,54,56,82],"class_list":["post-290724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-grand-central-terminal","tag-midtown-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}