More Weak Columns Found at a New York City Tower That Was Being Turned Into Apartments

Newly obtained engineering drawings show that eight more steel columns at a Midtown Manhattan high-rise were weaker than they should have been, The New York Times reported on August 28, 2026. That is more than twice the number previously known.

The building at 235 East 42nd Street is the former Pfizer headquarters. It was being converted into 1,600 apartments when two of its support columns — the vertical pillars that hold a building up — buckled on July 7. Buckling means the column bent or crumpled under pressure instead of staying straight. Responding authorities found two mangled columns on the 21st floor along with multiple cracks, according to the Associated Press. The failures triggered immediate evacuations and left the building at risk of collapse before crews stabilized it by July 8.

The Times's reporting on the engineering drawings changes the picture. The two buckled columns were the visible sign of trouble. But the drawings show that eight additional columns did not have enough reinforcement — the extra steel built into a column to help it carry weight. Imagine a table with legs made of thin cardboard. Two legs might bend first, but if eight legs are all too thin, the problem is not just in the two that gave way. It is spread across the whole table.

This matters for a few reasons. The number of columns needing repair is now much larger. The drawings also serve as a record of how the building was actually designed or built, which helps experts figure out whether the problem started with the original design, with how the steel was made, or with how it was put together on site. And for a building that has already been stabilized, the discovery of more weak columns raises the question of whether the fixes already in place solve all of the problems — or just the ones that became visible.

The timeline stretches over several weeks. The columns buckled on July 7. Authorities confirmed the building was stable by July 8. The Associated Press identified the building as the former Pfizer headquarters on July 10. Then nearly seven weeks passed before the engineering drawings became public through The Times's reporting on August 28.

The bigger picture here is about the risks of converting older office buildings into homes. The former Pfizer headquarters was being turned into 1,600 apartments, a project that involves major changes to the building's structure. Every building has a load path — the route that the weight of the building and everything in it travels down to the ground. Columns are a key part of that path. If they are not strong enough, the whole system is at risk. The fact that multiple columns lacked enough reinforcement suggests that whatever safety checks happened before construction did not catch these problems in time.

The engineering drawings now in the public record give a much more detailed view of the building's condition than the buckled columns alone could provide. Whether the weak columns matched the original building plans or were a deviation from what designers intended is a question the available reporting does not answer. What the drawings do establish is that the structural condition at 235 East 42nd Street was worse, and more widespread, than the July incident alone suggested.