Emergency services evacuated a 37-storey building on East 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning after construction workers reported falling bricks and discovered that two structural support columns had buckled. The New York City Fire Department said it received a call shortly before 8 a.m. local time, and responding units found the columns deformed on the 21st and 22nd floors, with floors sagging between the 21st and 26th levels. No injuries were reported, and all workers inside the building were accounted for, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The building, the former global headquarters of pharmaceutical company Pfizer, is being converted into approximately 1,600 luxury apartments in what developers describe as the largest office-to-residential conversion in the city’s history. The project involves adding more than a dozen storeys to the original tower. Fire Chief John Esposito told reporters that the steel-frame construction made a total collapse unlikely, but warned of a possible “localised collapse” and said the structure had continued to move after the initial damage was discovered. A frozen zone was established from 40th to 45th streets between First and Third avenues, and at least nine neighbouring buildings were evacuated, including a school with around 400 children, two hotels, and the consulates of Brazil and Israel.

The developer, Metro Loft Management, said in a statement that it was working with the Department of Buildings to understand the situation, and its founder, Nathan Berman, told the Wall Street Journal that the damage was confined to a small section of the complex and that 95 per cent of the structure remained intact. A union representative for steamfitters, however, told the New York Times that support beams were “bending like cigarettes” and blamed the addition of floors without sufficient steel reinforcement. Brazilian and Israeli diplomatic missions confirmed the temporary closure of their consulates, with Brazil’s foreign ministry stating that the building would reopen as soon as authorities deemed it safe. Local media also reported that the construction site had been the subject of several complaints in recent months about falling debris and unsafe conditions, though city inspectors had not issued violations after those visits.

By late afternoon, city officials said the building had not shown further movement for several hours, allowing a small team of engineers to enter and begin installing emergency shoring. The Department of Buildings said structural engineers would work through the night to stabilise the compromised columns. The cause of the buckling remains under investigation, and authorities have not yet indicated when evacuated residents and businesses might be allowed to return.