The downtown high-rise that dangerously collapsed Tuesday would need to be partially demolished — though stabilizing it to even attempt that risky step would have been too harrowing, experts told The Post.
The 37-story former Pfizer headquarters at 235 E. 42nd St. near Second Avenue will first need to be stabilized as soon as possible to prevent a potential local collapse, they said.
Without intervention, it poses a “huge danger” and “could collapse,” said Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer with five decades of experience who served on the federal team that investigated the World Trade Center disaster.
He noted that the under-construction building’s twisted columns on many of its floors now carry only about a third of the load for which they were designed — leaving other beams and columns intact and “extremely stressed.”
Engineers will need to install brackets on the columns in the floor below the collapsed columns to bring the structure back level and relieve the load on the intact infrastructure, he said.
Workers will also have to replace failed columns – although installation can only take place after experts assess the safety of the building, as well as the design of the new columns.
“It has to be done quickly, it can’t be done immediately,” he said. “Engineers will need to go in and assess how the damage is progressing.
“It should be possible to make repairs within a week, stabilize it, and then start the structural repair,” he said.
But Emily Guglielmo, a structural engineer and principal at Martin/Martin, noted that even getting engineers inside the building to stabilize it would be a risky effort.
“If possible, in order to reduce further evacuation life safety concerns, the quickest solution is to try to get that temporary support and shoring up there,” she said, adding that it would be a “balancing act” on whether individuals can safely enter support mode “or is the situation too risky.”
Structural engineers will determine whether the building is safe to enter by examining conditions against original drawings to understand how the building was constructed — and determine what, if anything, crews may have done to cause destabilization, experts said.
Both experts noted that the building would “certainly” require at least partial demolition before rebuilding could begin.
“The pictures we’ve seen show…a buckled column, you can see cracks, you can see sagging floors, and these are generally irreparable damage,” Guglielmo explained.
“It’s not like we can just push up the cracked floor and it can maintain its capacity, so there will definitely be removal and replacement of some of those items.”
The conversion of a commercial-to-residential high-rise — currently slated to be the largest of its kind in New York City with about 1,600 units — was taken down Tuesday when panicked construction workers discovered faulty support beams bending and beginning to give way on the 21st and 22nd floors, according to the NYPD and FDNY.
Nine residential complexes were quickly cleared and closed in a “frozen zone” amid the drama.
Only construction workers were in the building at the time and exited the building safely. No injuries were reported.
Tuesday’s scare was not the first time the tower has been flagged for safety issues, according to a Post review of Building Department records, 311 complaints and a slew of lawsuits filed by former workers.
Agency records show that seven construction site violations were issued between July and December 2025, resulting in total fines of more than $32,000.
“This raises some flags,” Hamburger said when asked about the violations.
Sources told the newspaper that the instability problem discovered on Tuesday appears to stem from ongoing construction work that includes adding 11 floors to the building.
“There are a few credible scenarios, including the columns potentially being overloaded from an unexpected load placed somewhere above the 21st floor,” Hamburger said of the cause of the destabilization.
Another scenario involved construction crews damaging or removing vital components of the building that provided support for columns that buckled.
“It is difficult to diagnose at this time, but it is very likely that there were heavier loads placed on this column than were expected to support it,” Guglielmo said. “The organ is likely to be sized incorrectly, both in design and construction.
“A lot of times, when something catastrophic like this happens, it’s a combination of a variety of factors,” she continued.
“Sometimes it doesn’t show up right away. Only when enough of the building has been constructed, or enough loads are added.”