Reports of falling bricks and buckling columns have forced evacuations in the world around a Midtown Manhattan high-rise office constructing that was being converted to luxury apartments, fire officials said Tuesday.
Among the many evacuated buildings was a college with about 400 children, Latest York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. There have been no reported injuries and all staff contained in the constructing were accounted for, he said. Nearby streets were closed to people and vehicles.
The Seventies-era constructing is the previous global headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. It’s situated in a busy corridor a couple of block from the landmark Chrysler Constructing and between Grand Central Terminal and the United Nations headquarters.
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The Latest York Fire Department said it received reports of bricks falling at around 8 a.m. from the 38-story tower. Officials found two columns had buckled on the twenty first and twenty second floors and that floors were sagging between the twenty first and twenty sixth floors.
The office-to-residential conversion has been billed as the biggest in the town’s history, based on Gensler, the architectural firm leading the project. The planned complex with greater than 1,600 units includes adding greater than a dozen stories atop the constructing’s original tower while also redesigning an adjoining tower. A spokesperson for Gensler didn’t immediately return a voicemail and email in search of comment.
Asked whether the constructing was actually susceptible to collapse, Mamdani said first responders found “structural issues with the constructing” and “beyond that, only for those within the immediate area to follow the instructions of those on the bottom.”
Town’s constructing department said its inspectors and engineers were on the scene at 235 East forty second Street.
“Our top priority straight away,” the mayor added, “is the protection of those that live on this area and the protection of those that work on this area.”
– more to return
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