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Inside the plan to fix the nearly collapsed Pfizer Building, 1/64th of an inch at a time
By
David Brand
Published Oct 16, 2026 at 1:54 p.m. ET
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Christopher Werth
By
David Brand
Published Oct 16, 2026 at 1:54 p.m. ET
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The effort to redevelop a Midtown high rise after a near-catastrophic structural failure is now underway — a hair’s breadth at a time.
Newly filed engineering plans for the city’s largest office-to-housing conversion project show construction crews will gradually jack up sagging floors in increments of 1/64th of an inch, or roughly the size of the edge of a business card. They will eventually raise the floors about 7 inches.
The work is set to begin more than three months after city officials said they were concerned the so-called Pfizer Building at 235 East 42nd St. would collapse when a pair of columns on the 21st floor folded beneath a major expansion of the existing structure. As Gothamist first reported, the columns were not reinforced despite an engineer’s city-approved instructions to turn the flimsy I-shaped beams into sturdy boxes.
Immediately after the debacle, project developer MetroLoft described plans to rebuild the section of the tower where the columns bent. The company’s strategy has now changed, according to the engineering plans and reviews submitted to the Department of Buildings.
A MetroLoft spokesperson declined to comment on the project or new strategy.
A spokesperson for the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, which drafted the plan, also declined to comment. The company has handled other major projects around the city, including the arch at Grand Army Plaza and a 70-story apartment complex called the Orchard in Long Island City.
Another firm, Plan B Engineering, reviewed the project plan and submitted its analysis to the Department of Buildings. The company did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.
FDNY drone imagery shows a buckled steel structural member inside the office-to-residential conversion project at 235 E. 42nd St., where officials say two structural columns failed and floors above began to sag.
Some work was already underway on the higher floors of the project when Gothamist visited Friday, with a hoist elevator seen moving up and down the side of the building near the site of the collapsed columns. Records show the columns were removed last month and Department of Buildings spokesperson David Maggiotto said the jacking is scheduled to begin next week.
The city’s Department of Buildings has not yet released the results of an investigation into the cause of the near-disaster.
Maggiotto said the new project plan is safe and that agency engineers will oversee the work.
“We would not allow any work to proceed in the city if we thought it was posing a hazard to the public,” Maggiotto said. “These plans to effectuate permanent structural repairs to the building were approved by DOB following an extensive vetting and review process by senior department engineers, as well as from an independent third-party engineering firm.”
The new plans were first reported by the New York Times.
The company Barone Steel Fabricators was hired to handle initial steel installation, according to job filings. Following the July incident, the city’s Department of Buildings targeted other projects handled by Barone in a citywide safety enforcement sweep, Gothamist previously reported.
Barone executives did not respond to requests for comment on the project. An attorney for the company, Paul Callan, told Gothamist that Barone is no longer working on the job after it “completed all required work under the contract to date."
“They are not working on the job site now but may be back to complete other contracted work,” Callan said Friday. "They have not been fired, they have not been terminated.”
Callan said that “there’s been no criticism” of Barone.
A framing plan for the 20th and 21st floors of the office-to-housing conversion at 235 East 42nd St.
New York City Department of Buildings
The proposed 1,600-unit apartment complex is set to be the city’s largest-ever office-to-housing conversion project. But the structural failure at the building that once housed the headquarters of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer prompted a flurry of concern over similar projects across the five boroughs. City leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have embraced office conversions as the fastest way to increase the amount of housing in New York City.
After the Pfizer Building incident, the Department of Buildings said it conducted an analysis of other office conversion projects and did not find problems.
Structural engineers who reviewed the new plans to gradually jack up the floors said MetroLoft’s revised strategy appeared safe and incremental.
“The threat is going too fast and missing a problem, like something that is causing damage somewhere else,” said Eric Cowley, president of the firm Cowley Engineering.
Cowley said he did not see a need to redevelop the entire section of the building above the bent columns, despite MetroLoft’s initial pronouncements.
"I think the repair is fine,” he said. “It’s not cost-effective to rebuild unless that were changing the configuration or adding volume.”
Structural engineer Abi Aghayere, a professor at Drexel University, said he saw “nothing unusual” in the peer-reviewed plan to begin jacking a fraction of an inch at a time.
“It’s testing the system,” Aghayere said. “They want to make sure everything is safe.”
Tagged
housing
new york city
David Brand
David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 908-310-3960.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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