By Maria Tsvetkova and Joseph Ax<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) \u2013 A Midtown Manhattan high-rise being converted into 1,600 apartments has been stabilized after buckling support columns triggered evacuations and fears of a collapse, but officials and engineers were still trying on Wednesday to determine what went wrong.<\/p>\n
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani \u200bsaid that emergency crews had installed temporary shoring and steel beams from the 18th to the 23rd floors \u200cand that there had been no further movement of the structure since Tuesday morning, when two columns buckled and several floors began to sag.<\/p>\n
The 37-story building on East 42nd Street, once Pfizer\u2019s corporate headquarters, is situated about a block from the United Nations. It was evacuated along with neighboring properties after bricks fell from the structure and responders discovered damage on the 21st and 22nd floors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been no additional movement of \u200cthe \u200bstructure since yesterday morning,\u201d the mayor told reporters.<\/p>\n
Neighboring buildings, including a school, had been \u2060evacuated, and busy 42nd Street was \u2060closed down. Some buildings have since reopened, but four remain evacuated and a ground-floor restaurant on a fifth is still shuttered, Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
Eva Notwicz, 47, who lives across the street, had been happy to see the office tower being converted into much-needed housing. But watching the addition of several floors atop the building, right above where the columns \u200beventually buckled on Tuesday, had made her nervous.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like it\u2019s hanging there,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you know, you trust the builders.\u201d<\/p>\n
She and her son were ordered out of her apartment on Tuesday morning, with time only to grab her \u2060phone and the dog, but were allowed back in by nighttime.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure \u2060they\u2019re gonna make it super safe now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, bystanders took photos from the street, \u200bwhile office workers at the News Building across the street \u2013 the former home of the Daily News \u2013 said they were told \u200bto return to their workplace.<\/p>\n
CAUSE UNCLEAR<\/p>\n
One of the developers behind the project told the New York \u200cTimes that the building was never in danger of collapsing and described the buckling columns as a run-of-the-mill problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap,\u201d Nathan Berman, the managing principal and founder of developer MetroLoft, told the newspaper. He said the columns were likely not reinforced properly and thus could not bear the weight of the addition above.<\/p>\n
Experts agreed that \u2060the risk of collapse was minimal, but that city inspectors would have to determine the exact cause of the buckling columns before allowing construction to proceed. There were a number of possible explanations, experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, it\u2019s not just one mistake,\u201d said Michael \u2060Chajes, a civil and environmental engineering professor \u200cat the University of Delaware.<\/p>\n
Converting an existing building carries more complications than building a \u2060brand-new structure, said Magued Iskander, chair of the civil and urban engineering department at New \u200bYork University\u2019s \u200cTandon School of Engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are more unknowns,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is easier to design from \u200ba blank sheet \u2060of paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
The building, which served for decades as Pfizer\u2019s corporate headquarters, is being converted into a 1,600-unit apartment complex due for completion in 2027, according to the architectural firm Gensler\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Mamdani said Wednesday he remained supportive of converting office space into residences to help address the city\u2019s housing affordability crisis. The city\u2019s building department will conduct a \u201crigorous assessment\u201d to ensure that the high-rise is safe and compliant with all codes before any further construction work can proceed, he added.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage, \u200bMark Porter and Howard Goller)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Tsvetkova and Joseph Ax NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) \u2013 A Midtown Manhattan high-rise being converted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-290782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290782","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=290782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}