The Midtown Manhattan high rise that became dangerously unstable last month had more columns that were missing reinforcements than was previously known, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, and reviewed by independent engineers.
The city temporarily shut down the area around the building, the former headquarters of Pfizer on East 42nd Street, because of two columns that buckled on the 21st floor as the structure was being converted to apartments.
But a review of public documents obtained by The Times through a records request to the New York City Department of Buildings shows that steel plates were missing or inadequate on eight more columns that were supposed to be strengthened to support floors being added above.
In the documents, the insufficient reinforcements were referred to as “missing/partial length,” which could include missing plates intended to strengthen steel columns, or smaller plates — called “stiffener plates” — to ensure structural continuity through floors. Plates that were shorter than designed could also have been mistakenly put up.
Repair work to those eight additional columns, according to the drawings, has now been done. Those columns are scattered on the 33rd, 34th and 35th floors. Daniel Linzell, a structural engineer and dean of engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that the notation in the drawings was clear. In those eight spots, he said, “it is implying that either the entire plate was missing or the plate is not as long as was intended.”
Dr. Linzell added, “It appears that whoever’s eyes were supposed to be confirming that the columns’ strengthening was completed were not.” He said he did not believe that this happens regularly in the construction industry.
“This appears to be a lack of oversight,” he said.
It is unclear when the problems with the eight additional columns were discovered. The Buildings Department declined to directly address multiple questions from The Times on the details of the missing reinforcements indicated in the plans.
Instead, Andrew Rudansky, an agency spokesman, said in a statement: “This administration is committed to the safety and well-being of our fellow New Yorkers. Following the structural failure at this building in July, D.O.B. engineers immediately launched a comprehensive investigation into the factors that contributed to the incident. This wide-ranging investigation, which is being conducted in tandem with our partners in law enforcement, is ongoing.”
Construction to finish the project near Grand Central Terminal, which was halted on July 7, has yet to restart because of a stop work order from the city. And city officials have yet to say publicly how the columns buckled or who is to blame.
But a Times investigation last month found that steel plates necessary to reinforce the two columns and four others across the 19th and 20th floors were not installed before the buckling occurred, despite being part of structural engineering plans. The fact that even more columns were found to have similar issues after July 7 raises questions about the quality and oversight of the construction, and which, if any, of these issues could have been avoided.
The new drawings were submitted and signed by the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti and were part of the approved plans for the building. Those plans documented the newly disclosed issues, which appear to have occurred during construction and to be unrelated to the design of the renovation. The firm declined to comment for this article.
In those documents, the eight additional columns are described as needing to be “repaired per GACE’s structural drawings,” referring to the engineering company that designed the building’s steel structure. The columns are traced out with heavy blue boxes.
“You don’t need to be an engineer” to understand what that notation means, said Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers.
“They’re telling them to go back and do what they didn’t do the first time,” he said. “It’s telling me that the columns with the blue box around them have the same problem” as the two that buckled.
A GACE spokesman declined to address questions about what the plans reveal about those columns.
The plans do not indicate that any additional columns collapsed beyond those already known. Several engineers said it was unlikely that the problems with the plates on the eight additional columns had anything to do with the buckling and partial collapse itself, adding that most of the columns were not close to that collapse and there was no obvious pattern linking them to a structural failure.
The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors over the existing building below.
The morning of July 7, the building was evacuated after the Fire Department and the Buildings Department determined it was unstable. The area stretching from 40th Street to 45th Street between First and Third Avenues in Manhattan was immediately evacuated, and the area directly surrounding the building remained shut down for several days, disrupting businesses and shutting tourists out of their hotels.
Eventually, city officials said the building was stable, and the so-called “frozen zone” reopened nearly three weeks later.
Arfa Momin and Claire Fahy contributed reporting.
The post More Columns Lacked Support in Troubled N.Y.C. Building, Documents Show appeared first on New York Times.
