# New York's Buckling Tower: What Happens Now? ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now.webp]] **Creator:** The B1M · **Presenter:** Fred Mills (narrator and host, per end credits) · **Published:** 2026-08-26 · **Length:** 15:38 · [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tXM9unbm-w) > Caption source: YouTube English (en-GB) manual captions via yt-dlp (default client), first attempt; news-clip audio in the cold open checked against the English auto captions. Chapters from the video description; full written story on [theb1m.com](https://www.theb1m.com/video/what-really-happened-at-235-east-42nd-street). Additional footage and images: Tessa Bury, FOX 5, PIX11 News, Bloomberg, FDNY, CBS New York, NBC News, Qwen Wan, The NYC Walking Show, ABC, Fox & Friends, Wilmer Nugra, NYC Department of Buildings, Reuters, WABC, Anthony Marino, The Independent. Paid promotion for Rayon Design. ## Outline ### 0:00 The Incident - **0:00** Cold open on FDNY radio/news audio: operating at 235 East 42nd, with "columns partially down on 21 and 22" and floors sagging between levels 21 and 26. - **0:12** On **7 July 2026**, crowds gathered outside **235 East 42nd Street** as news crews reported a Midtown building "on the verge of collapsing", with bricks falling from a former office being converted into luxury rentals. - **0:28** The developer called it "nothing more than a typical construction mishap". The B1M points out that emergency services don't close a whole area for routine problems. A news clip calls it "far from a typical construction accident", and another witness says the I-beams were "bending like cigarettes". - **0:45** Officials: the building remained unstable, with additional movement seen in one of the compromised columns. - **0:54** Two months on, with investigations still open, the video sets out to go through the clues and explain how one of New York's biggest building projects got into this state. ### 1:13 New York's Office-to-Residential Conversions - **1:13** A police cordon is familiar in a big city. One enforced because a building might collapse is not. - **1:28** Location: near **Grand Central Terminal**, among a cluster of offices. 235 East 42nd opened in **1961** as the **Pfizer headquarters** and stayed mostly under the radar. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t0145.webp]] - **1:43** 235 was **33 storeys**, more than three times the height of its neighbour **219 East 42nd**, which opened in the early 20th century at just **10 storeys**. The two are "joined at the hip". - **1:58** Both were built for an era hungry for office space. Since the pandemic, vacancy rates have shot up, and at the same time the city is in a **housing crisis**. - **2:31** In **2024** New York approved **City of Yes for Housing Opportunity**, which relaxed the rules on converting offices into homes. - **2:43** By **2025** construction was underway on what architect **Gensler** called the largest conversion of its kind in New York City history. Once open it will have more than **1,600 apartments**. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t0250.webp]] ### 3:04 An Engineering Challenge - **3:02** The smaller **219** is being taken up to **29 or 30 storeys** (depending on how mechanical floors are counted). The bigger **235** is being raised by **four storeys** to **37** overall. - **3:23** Two towers built about half a century apart are being merged into one development. Between them, America fought two world wars, went through the Great Depression and overhauled how it builds. - **3:54** Lead-in to the sponsor: today's offices are designed for desks, computers and coffee. Fred jokes about turning his own office into a bedroom (a super-king bed, but keeping the aircon). - **4:16** **Sponsor: Rayon Design.** A browser-based CAD tool with no install or version wrangling, a library of about **50,000 blocks**, an AI tool that generates missing blocks, and concept-to-presentation in one place. QR code and link in the description. - **5:16** Back in Manhattan: **219** was built in the early 1900s with **terracotta and cast iron**. **235** is mostly **steel**, using material "nearly half as strong" as some steel available today. So the two buildings need very different redevelopment approaches. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t0525.webp]] - **5:45** Steel from the 1960s is "very, very, very different" from 2026 steelwork. - **5:53** **Chris O'Regan**, chartered structural engineer and head of structural safety at **Frankham Consultancy Group**, is not involved in the project and gave his view the week after the incident. First you find out how the structure actually performs, effectively reverse-engineering it to see what it can support. Then you design, apply and develop any strengthening works. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t0550.webp]] - **6:25** Hurdle one: joining two buildings from different eras into one development. Hurdle two: office-to-residential conversion. Apartments have strict **natural light and ventilation** rules, the plumbing needs an overhaul, ceiling and lighting arrangements may change, and weight distribution differs between floors. Support beams have to be adjusted for new loads and new floorplans. - **7:06** In **2023 Moody's Analytics** (captioned "Moody Analytics") reviewed more than **1,000** city office buildings and found only **3%** were viable for apartment conversion. ### 7:16 One Wall Street - **7:17** Precedent the channel covered earlier: the 1930s **One Wall Street** reopened in **2023** as luxury apartments, with **six floors added**. - **7:33** It took careful load calculations. **Lighter voided slabs** were used for the new floors, existing beams and columns were strengthened throughout, and **transfer structures** carefully spread the new loads into the old frame. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t0740.webp]] - **7:51** Apartments are generally lighter than offices, so the design could count on a weight reduction and get more out of the old frame. This shows conversions are doable but complex. ### 8:06 The 235 East 42nd Street Incident Explained - **8:14** Early on **7 July 2026**, workers found a buckled steel column on the **21st floor**. The **Fire Department** was called at about **8 am** and found several sagging floors, cracks and **two buckling columns**. - **8:29** Workers were evacuated, followed by **nine nearby buildings, including a school**. The area became a cordoned **"frozen zone"**, and the mayor announced the structural problems publicly (clip: two columns buckled, multiple cracks and sagging floors, additional movement seen). - **8:56** Later that Tuesday morning, officials confirmed the damage was confined to one section of the development, not the whole building. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t1000.webp]] - **9:05** Engineering firm **GACE**, which produced the building's engineering plan, pointed to a cause quickly. As reported by **Gothamist**, GACE principal **Chris Behan** blamed a **lack of reinforcement from the 19th floor to the top of the 21st floor**. Earlier Gothamist reporting showed GACE's plans did call for reinforcement on the two columns that buckled. - **9:32** Developer **Nathan Berman** seemed to agree. On the day, he suggested the 21st-floor problem came from extra stress from weight added from the **22nd level upwards**, part of a **widening of the top 15 floors**, and said the columns may not have been reinforced properly. The city's **Department of Buildings** said the steel columns would need reinforcing. - **10:00** O'Regan: the columns were overloaded and buckled in on themselves, which is how steel, reinforced-concrete or really any columns usually fail. Wrapping a column, like a toilet-paper tube around fingers, resists buckling, and that is the reinforcement that was intended. - **10:20** A **criminal investigation** is ongoing. - **10:27** The **NYC Department of Buildings (DoB)** enforces codes and safety, so it is central to the investigation. Gothamist reported a DoB complaint note, posted and then deleted, that said "failure to provide steel reinforcement as per approved plans led to the cause of the incident". The next week, DoB press secretary **Andrew Rudansky** reportedly said a staff member had posted it, it was inaccurate, and it was corrected the same day. Even so, it matches what GACE and the developer said. - **11:10** The buckled columns were braced with **temporary shoring** so they were stable and safe enough to assess. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t1120.webp]] - **11:18** O'Regan: where the columns buckled, the structure **cantilevers / over-sails** past them, which put significant extra load on those two columns. He suspects that is why those two failed rather than others. He also asks where the load went after they buckled, since the building is still standing: "a very loaded question, pun intended." ### 11:59 Reverberations - **11:58** The roads have reopened and life goes on as normal, but the story isn't over. For now the evidence is Fire Department reports, deleted DoB notes, and reactive comments from the developer and engineers. - **12:18** If the columns were never properly reinforced, that is a major oversight, but better found now than when the building was fully occupied. - **12:34** The damaged section faces a rebuild and possibly changes to the structural system. Berman says a full demolition is unlikely. **MetroLoft** was approached for comment and had not replied by publication. - **12:58** Berman suggested only a few extra weeks of delay, which The B1M calls "pretty ambitious" given the investigation and the rework needed. **Crain's** reported in **2024** that lease signings could begin in **2026**, with move-ins from **2027**. Developers answer to investors and apartment pre-sales. ![[images/New-Yorks-Buckling-Tower-What-Happens-Now-t1320.webp]] - **13:27** The **Wall Street Journal** reported that US lenders and investors are rethinking projects like this. - **13:36** 235 already had **44 prior complaints**, ranging from falling debris to a claim that a worker blew material off the roof with a leaf blower. Emergency services found no evidence for that claim at the time. - **13:58** After the incident, safety reviews were carried out on office-to-apartment conversions across the **five boroughs**. **Three buildings** got stop-work orders or partial pauses over cracking beams, site-safety problems and missing paperwork. ### 14:17 The Power of Construction - **14:17** It's too early to know the long-term consequences, and The B1M will follow the investigation. - **14:27** Fred's closing point: we take construction for granted. Billions of people use millions of buildings every day without incident, and countless projects go fine without anyone hearing about them. One ordinary building becoming world news shows how rare these failures are. His "glass half full" view is that the episode shows how lucky we are. - **15:09** Sponsor reminder for Rayon Design (free trial via QR or link), then a subscribe call. ## Things Mentioned ### Buildings, projects & places - **235 East 42nd Street**: opened in 1961 as the Pfizer HQ, 33 storeys, being raised 4 storeys to 37. Two columns on floor 21 buckled on 7 July 2026. - **219 East 42nd Street**: early-1900s terracotta/cast-iron building of 10 storeys, being taken up to 29–30 storeys. - Combined conversion: 1,600+ apartments, described by Gensler as NYC's largest conversion of its kind. Widening of the top 15 floors (from level 22 up). - **One Wall Street**: 1930s tower reopened in 2023 as luxury apartments with 6 added floors. - Grand Central Terminal and Midtown Manhattan. Nine nearby buildings evacuated, including a school. NYC's five boroughs. ### Engineering & construction concepts - Office-to-residential conversion / adaptive reuse: natural light and ventilation rules, plumbing overhaul, ceiling/lighting changes, floor-load redistribution. - 1960s steel vs. modern steel ("nearly half as strong"). Terracotta and cast-iron construction. - Reverse-engineering an existing structure's capacity, then designing strengthening works. - Column buckling under overload. Column wrapping/reinforcement (the "toilet-paper tube" analogy). - Cantilevered / over-sailing structure adding load to specific columns. The question of where load is redistributed after a column fails. - Temporary shoring. FDNY "frozen zone" cordon. - Lighter voided slabs, strengthened beams and columns, and transfer structures (One Wall Street). ### Policy, organisations, media & money - **City of Yes for Housing Opportunity** (2024): relaxed NYC office-to-residential conversion rules. - Post-pandemic office vacancy and NYC's housing crisis. Moody's Analytics 2023 study: only 3% of 1,000+ offices viable for conversion. - FDNY. NYC Department of Buildings, including a deleted complaint note and an ongoing criminal investigation. New York City's mayor. - 44 prior complaints at 235. Three conversion sites given stop-work or partial-pause orders in the safety review that followed. - Reporting sources: Gothamist, Crain's (2024: leasing in 2026, move-ins from 2027), Wall Street Journal (lenders and investors rethinking conversions), plus TV news footage (FOX 5, PIX11, CBS New York, NBC, ABC, WABC, Bloomberg, Reuters, etc.). - **Rayon Design**: paid promotion. Browser CAD with about 50,000 blocks and AI block generation. - *Mega Builds* by Fred Mills, the theb1m.com full story, and Get Construction Talking (the description's mental-health initiative). ## Bios - **Fred Mills**: Co-founder of The B1M, narrator and host of this episode, and one of its executive producers (end credits). Author of *Mega Builds*, which is promoted in the description. - **James Rabey**: Producer (end credits). - **Aaron Wood**: Video editor (end credits). - **Vince North**: Graphics (end credits). - **Serena Jones** and **James Durkin**: Executive producers with Fred Mills (end credits). - **Chris O'Regan**: Chartered structural engineer and head of structural safety at Frankham Consultancy Group. Not involved in the 235 project. Gave The B1M independent comment on reverse-engineering old structures, column buckling and load redistribution. - **Frankham Consultancy Group**: Multidisciplinary consultancy where O'Regan leads structural safety. - **Nathan Berman**: Developer behind the 235/219 East 42nd conversion (through MetroLoft). At first called the incident a typical mishap, later linked it to unreinforced columns under added load, and expects a delay of weeks and no full demolition. - **MetroLoft**: Development firm associated with Berman and the project. Had not answered The B1M's request for comment by publication. - **GACE (GACE Consulting Engineers)**: Engineers of record for the building's engineering plan. Its plans called for reinforcement on the columns that later buckled. - **Chris Behan**: GACE principal who, per Gothamist, blamed missing reinforcement from the 19th floor to the top of the 21st. - **Gensler**: Global architecture firm on the conversion, which it called the largest of its kind in NYC history. - **Andrew Rudansky**: NYC Department of Buildings press secretary who reportedly said the deleted complaint note was posted by a staff member and was inaccurate. - **NYC Department of Buildings (DoB)**: City agency that enforces building codes and safety, and a key player in the investigation. - **FDNY (Fire Department of the City of New York)**: Responded at about 8 am, found the buckled columns, sagging floors and cracks, and ran the evacuation and frozen zone. - **Pfizer**: Pharmaceutical company whose headquarters 235 East 42nd was from 1961. - **Gothamist**: New York news outlet whose reporting supplies most of the documentary trail (GACE statement, plans, deleted DoB note). - **Rayon Design**: Browser-based CAD/design platform and this episode's paid sponsor.