The Sky Was the Limit For Turning Offices Into Apartments—Until Some Columns Buckled

The Wall Street Journal ^ | July 16, 2026 7:00 pm ET | Nicholas G. Miller , Peter Grant and Kevin T. Dugan

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Trouble at Nathan Berman’s Manhattan project brings new scrutiny to a booming sector; housing needs collide with safety concerns

In the late 1990s, a young Nathan Berman walked into a faded brick office building in Manhattan’s Financial District and saw the future. Within two years, he had transformed the 1920s-era Tyler Building into 111 modern apartments.

Berman was at the leading edge of what has turned into a real-estate boom. Banks and brokerage firms were abandoning older office buildings, and New York and other cities were growing desperate for new housing as rents soared. Converting offices into apartments was a financial and political winner.

Berman and his company, MetroLoft, went all in. Over time, the projects got bigger and more complicated. He wasn’t just turning office nooks into kitchenettes, or making cubicle spaces into home offices. He began making buildings bigger, hollowing out their cores to bring in air and natural light, adding bunches of floors and drawing up plans for new swimming pools. 

“He’s gone from…100 units to 200 units to 400 units to, now it’s 800, 1,200—who the hell knows,” said Andrew Heiberger, whose brokerage, Citi Habitats, marketed many of Berman’s early conversions. 

Last week’s construction disaster at Berman’s most ambitious project to date—turning the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown Manhattan into 1,600 apartments—is raising questions about what can go wrong in complex conversions. And with Manhattan’s apartment vacancy rate below 2%, city officials have to decide whether to hit the brakes on the wave of projects now under way. 

The troubled Pfizer headquarters project, the largest office-to-residential conversion in the country, ground to a halt after two structural columns...

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TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS:

[E. Pluribus Unum]

When developers carve out the center of former office buildings to increase air and light, zoning rules often allow them to add that lost square footage on the top of the building.

The former Pfizer World Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan (located at 219 and 235 East 42nd Street) actually consists of two adjoining buildings constructed at different times:

• 235 East 42nd Street: Construction started in 1960 and the building officially opened for use in April 1961. This 33-story tower served as their main world headquarters for decades.
• 219 East 42nd Street: This older, 10-story building was completed earlier, in 1905.

I am not an architect or engineer, but tacking additional stories onto the tops of structures built 65 to 120 years ago seems like an invitation to disaster to me.

[Lockbox]

Conversation of former office space to living space is expensive. Not enough bathrooms nor electricity. The expensive items!

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That’s a lot of pipe and wire.

[Equine1952]

Waterbeds and fat chicks will do it every time. 😜

[Hebrews 11:6]

an invitation to disaster

That's what structural engineers do: calculate the loads, then design a supporting structure with a safety factor.

As an extreme example, the safety factor of Dodger Stadium's cantilevered grandstand is seven--i.e., seven times stronger than it needs to be. It's been claimed that it would survive the detonation of a hydrogen bomb on the pitcher's mound. Why did they overbuild it so much? Because you can't have the fans out on the front edge of the cantilever bouncing up and down--they'd never return.

The post-mortem of the twin towers which fell on 9/11 revealed inadequate engineering.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The post-mortem of the twin towers which fell on 9/11 revealed inadequate engineering.

Good thing they had the controlled demolition explosives planted or things could have gotten ugly.

[allendale]

Personally give Berman credit. Clever capitalist who is converting declining office building assets into something that the market currently wants.If he did not convert decaying, vacant office buildings into housing, they would just rot. Not to say that the people who purchase them and actually live there have any brains.

[lewislynn]

The post-mortem of the twin towers which fell on 9/11 revealed inadequate engineering.

And fireproofing on the steel.

[Bernard]

Along with all of that, is residential use heavier than office space?

[Veto!]

Pfizer is cursed.

Phizer’s vax killed so many people, it totally wrecked its karma.
My son-in-law died from a covid shot, big strong, handsome head of the sheriff’s department, four months from diagnosis to death.

I don’t give a flying fig if their building crtopples over.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Office spaces generally have far fewer walls, appliances and plumbing fixtures than residential layouts--but it's not a massive difference.

Berman is an old pro at this, and we don't know yet what actually caused it. That said, though, this should never happen. Perhaps he got cocky and cut some corners, or maybe he's just lost a step.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Waterbeds and fat chicks will do it every time. 😜

Speaking from experience? ROFL

[Equine1952]

It’s why you always exceed code requirements. 👌

[Keyhopper]

The Surfside towers had the brilliant idea of installing planters with trees on the pool deck to give that south beach look.
To bad they didn’t place them over columns and beams.
HOA DEI engineering at it’s finest

[fidelis]

Conversation of former office space to living space is expensive. Not enough bathrooms nor electricity. The expensive items!

Not to mention the addition of kitchens and more rigorous fire detection, fire alarm and egress requirements. Residential construction is a whole different animal than office space construction. Residential construction has it's own Code book in addition to the main one.

[Lockbox]

Yep

[FLT-bird]

No doubt there will be considerable expense in retrofitting old office spaces into residential space. That said, it makes sense to do and should still be significantly cheaper than having to build from scratch.

[ridesthemiles]

JUST IMAGINE ADDING AN EARTHQUAKE TO THE MIX

[Celtic Conservative]

“Good thing they had the controlled demolition explosives planted or things could have gotten ugly.”

The fact that you believe that tells me everything I need to know about you.

CC

[Chickensoup]

Floors were added. Something went wrong