A nightmare for New York, will this ever get fixed?

That $6 million is looking cheep now.

“Caissons to bedrock”. Three words that would have saved the building. I learned those three words 50 years ago in architecture school. Damn.

"A scenic esplanade bustling with walkers and cyclists" Shows elevated highway

The additional $6 million to properly prepare the foundation when spread across the cost of units in that building would probably not have affected the occupancy rate. It's an example of pure greed on the part of the developer and it looks good on them that their gamble failed.

Those ultra-thin skyscrapers freak me out.

Greed Before Safety.

In the building next door 181 Maiden Lane most of the piles are driven to “the “point of refusal” with large pile caps. It has not tilted at all in 43 years.

They took the risk for the 6 million additional return. Now the risk is being realized.

I have discovered that most engineering disasters are caused by some manager going "we could save a bit of money by...." They don't realise that good engineers have already designed the structure to be as cheap as possible, but still meet all of the engineering requirements. Usually the management's cost cutting comes straight out of the structures safety margin.

All the high tech computer designs and engineering, but the ones built in the 30s with guys throwing hot rivets are still standing strong.

As an architect I would have gotten fired from this job in the design phase because I would have insisted that the foundation be set in bedrock. I hate cheap clients trying to save a buck instead of doing it the correct way in the first place. Also, these super thin towers defy logic, the structure required to keep them standing is unreal.

greed takes a SMACK here

180 Maiden built 40+ years ago never has any of these foundation problems ... because back then, we knew how to build.

should have spent the $6mil on the foundations to bedrock. DOH!!!

U Mass Amherst built a 26 story library with brick facade. They didn't estimate the weight of the books correctly. When they started to fill it, bricks under compression started blowing off the sides... Their fix was to wrap the entire building in fence 30' away from the building and make one entrance under a covered roof while only using half the floors. There are entire floors with no access and no books. Other floors are empty except cubicles for people to study. On the same campus the residential buildings known as, "the towers" were built in swamp land and have continued to sink since they opened. Over the years they have had to remove and lower the stairs at the entrances to accommodate the new depth of the buildings

Yup, they screwed up. Saw the cost, went cheap. The cost wasn't even that much 166 feet is done all the time.

This problem reminds me of a similar problem with the Millenium Tower in downtown San Francisco.

finally someone admitting that 3 inches is a lot

Thus being the Big Apple, the obvious questions are: Which NY City politicians reaped contributions/favors from the developer? Which NY City building inspectors received favors/jobs from the developer? Which consulting firms received contracts/favors from the developer?

considering that the foundation caisons to bedrock was only 6 million, and units sold for over a million... it should have been a no brainer to go for the sure bet and not risk your massive investment.

Excuse me, but no building of just 60 stories, only 670 feet tall, can even come anywhere near "dominating New York City's downtown skyline." It ranks 87th. That's like saying some player who's 6'3" dominates the boards in the NBA.

3 inches ain't so bad... It's All in how you use it!

Fact is, this is among the hideous buildings to curse New York’s contemporary skyline. It might fit perfectly well in Miami or even the Upper East Side, but among the array of downtown’s office towers and the Seaport, it’s a blight. It’s gratifying to see the developers take a bath on this one.

3 inches is nothing, Mllennium tower in San Francisco Lean 29 inches on one corner of the building

One line from the Wikipedia article stands out: The developer “hired the Italian firm Pizzarotti as general contractor, likely in part because of Pizzarotti's low rates.” The Esplanade gang has entered the chat.

It is leaning towards the Millennium Tower obviously.

Good video. There's nothing more expensive than cutting costs. Time in and time out people still make that mistake.

Even the Bible talks about building your house on sand instead of rock.😂

It's a shame. I think the building design is stunning. A great looking heap.

Neglected and abandoned building: squatters, what are you waiting for?

I actually find comfort in the fact that 3 inches is cause for concern with construction on a building that tall. Sounds like they are on it, unlike another building i know..

I rather have a 100 plus acres of land in the country with a modest log cabin any day instead of living there.

No Thank you.. I wouldn’t go there even to visit

It seems with these tall, thin towers that going the extra mile with foundation prep would be a no brainer

Some people won't consider expensive precautions until they are screwed by the shortcuts. Things like this need to happen sometimes in order for others to not be as reckless in similar situations

Everybody knows pilings need to go down to bedrock if you build a tower on land created by fill. The owners and engineers on the job were incompetent, crooks, or both. New York had better arrange to remove the structure and do it soon.

The fact that the rather severe issues -- and the causes of those issues -- with the Millennium Tower in San Francisco are very well known makes this here seem even crazier. You'd think someone would say, "We're definitely going to do this the right way and drive piles all the way down to bedrock to avoid something like that from happening here in Manhattan," but apparently not.

I remember when they proposed this building.. I thought they are out of their minds due to the underground

Fascinating. (Writing and production are excellent.)

Thank you for the great video

I can't imagine yesterday's earthquake helping the situation of this building. This is what happens when you put upfront cost over long-term understanding of do it right means you do it once. Whatever cost measures to fix the tilt, prevent further tilting, legal fee's and inability to fulfill residence will all be multiple times higher then $7 million to build to bedrock.

0:24 If the tower was visibly tilting (to someone's perspective with just their bare eyes), the tower would have collapsed a long time ago. The Millennium Tower in SF has a far more concerning tilt, yet it is not possible to see the tilt with just your eyes.

The city should be. Responsible for approving the blueprints and the designs.

Because all new condos built after 2015 cut corners like crazy and use very cheap materials. It's a no-brainer.

amazing in this day and age that stuff like this happens, i’m sure there are plenty of people right here on youtube that saw this scenario unfolding

GREED IS WHAT MADE IT TILT! 😂

I find myself most impressed by whomever repelled down and painted the graffiti on the top 8 floors shown at 9:03.

The Millenium Towner in San Francisco is leaning 10 times as much as it's full of residents. Why is 3 inchs that bad? Do they expect it to continue?

The only thing that makes buildings in New York not frightening to be in is the fact that you know it's literally drilled into the Bedrock.. the actual hard, solid granite crust of the Earth which is exceptionally strong and stable in New York.. the stability of the ground is part of what makes New York city so special.. ( that and the fact that you can drink water out of your faucet anywhere in New York City with total confidence. New York City's water wins taste test over bottled)

different story in the wikipedia article about this building, "The developer hired engineering firms WSP Global and Arup Group, which both concluded that the building's lean did not compromise its structural integrity." etc.

"The Leaning Tower of Pizzarotti" - a Shining Monument to the "Open-Shop" movement in NYC Construction. BUILD UNION.

The Bush & Cheny Demolition Company could easily fix it. 😅

Keep in mind also the city of New York had to approve the engineering of this building for the permitting. They are partially responsible as well. They should've never taken this risk and made the developer pay for the proper engineering.

Not the first developer that tries to save money by not going down to bedrock with piles and runs into trouble!

We need to know more! Tell us the progress on this building.

It would have only added $6 million to the total to have a sturdy foundation? Sounds like they could have afforded to do that.

The lean can simply be managed through balancing on the opposite side that sways the structure

The tree with deepest roots remains standing after the storm.

Take the developer to the cleaners over this, sue the shareholders personally for the demolition

Curiously there is no mention of a thorough geologic survey to assess the suitability of building a high-rise tower on anything less than bedrock. From the information provided in this short documentary, it seems obvious the engineers were cutting corners to control cost. The fact that the building began to settle unevenly before it was completed is telling. The design specifications were clearly deeply flawed. I'm a geologist and this is what happens when a building is poorly designed and under engineered. I've read the book about the construction of the Brooklyn bridge written by Stephen Ambrose. That structure which crosses the east river stands as a testament to robust engineering accomplished well before scale models or computer modeling was even a pipe dream. It was the world's longest suspension bridge for twenty years.

Millennium tower has a competitor now

They could have saved themselves 6 million headaches when they just embedded the foundation into the bedrock.

I’m just a small builder, but how many times in the past have I said “ Never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over again,

This tower was just down the road from our apartment building on Pearl Street while visiting NYC last summer. My kid & I noticed & chatted about odd design & the tilt. We thought it was part of some innovative design 😂😂 But my kid did say "looks really scary & ready to topple over"

That was a fearless graffiti artist at 09:00 !

0:20 The other tower in the picture is also 'not standing straight and leaning', so it needs to be fixed or demolished as well.

Would a possible solution be reduce the floor numbers? In that way the building could anchor itself properly.

Stupid cost cut, thanks for the video

Three inch lean may not be that bad. The Millennium Tower in SF. Has 14 in lean and it got slightly worse after the attempted fix

Hard to believe a building designed like a sail made out of concrete could perform so poorly in the wind.

This issue is the definition of trying to pick up penny’s in front of a steam roller. They tried to save $6m and ended up costing themselves hundreds of millions. Pure greed and stupidity. You’re building a LUXURY tower. Just imagine the other corners they were cutting. I don’t even mean structural/engineering corners, I mean just on the quality of amenity material they were using. I’ve seen a lot of luxury buildings in NYC in my time and their quality has consistently gone down with each decade. It’s the small things, like seams not lining up, grout and sealant cracking, poor building maintenance infrastructure, things like that. But when you’re buying luxury property it’s those little things that matter.

This is exactly the same problem that happened in Frisco with the Millennium Tower but it has 58 stories and a 28 inch lean measured from the top. An attempt to fix the lean actually accelerated the leaning rate and amount and it has been halted.

That's another mess like the one in San Francisco that any new engineer would be a fool to touch, it's a litigation trap.

3" is not too much of lining. Edit second like in case of Millenium tower of SF after battle all are generals. Structural engineering is not an exact science. You do the best what you can. They tried something new and it didn't work.

Respect to whoever sprayed the graffiti at the top.... 😂

A building in san Francisco has a similar but worst tilt as well.

You don't need to be an engineer to see that this aspect ratio was guaranteed to fail.

What I see, engineers and architects are taking too much risk in developing these very tall buildings, ratio height 15 - 1 is extreme.

I know nothing about architecture or building but it just seems that cutting corners on the FOUNDATION is really not the way to save expense. I'm shocked that any developer would consider it with a building of that size.

Millenium Tower anyone?

Can they attach it to the big building next to it to help hold it straight?

I’d rather live in Brooklyn or Queens for a 10th of the price with a view of the city skyline over paying millions to live in city with a view of Brooklyn, Queens, SI or Jersey.

NEVER BUILD ON FILL! See the Marina district in San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake

I'm not sure how the "unforeseen tilt" wasn't easy to foresee. I'm no engineer and even I know better. Trying to save six million dollars turned out to cost them far more in the long run. I'm honestly surprised that Manhattan doesn't require such heavy highrise buildings to have piles driven all the way down to the bedrock. You'd think that would be something that was very strictly enforced, especially when you consider the soil most of those buildings sit on.

The thing that caught my eye was the tagging at the top of the building 9:01. I’m here in Chicago and sometimes you just catch tagging some where and wonder how in the hell did they get up there. Definitely looks like they must have repelled down this building at night and went back to skyscraper window cleaning the next morning.

Tony Soprano got involved with the construction I heard...

First class lever solution is needed here. The center of mass is away from the center that is why it leaning to the north. They need to counterbalance the building since it's heavy on the north side

The bible verse about building your house on sand comes to mind. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.....the difference between wisdom and knowledge.

I bet you CDI (Controlled Demolition Inc.) could fix it quick!

Shanghai has a much much worse underground, but they make 400m-600m-high towers standing without any problems as they do not joke in terms of piling and shoot rather with cannons on sparrows than having problems later like here described

Corruption. So many regulations and all that, if you live in New York you know everything is regulated. No one ever would give a permit to build something like that without checking on the foundations. Is so obvious developers just gave a huge chunk of money to the city to get the permits.

Good American engineers! Just words and show off. Like moon landing also.

I'm guessing that the engineers will figure out a solution. The building in SF that is also sinking/leaning has proven to be a tremendous challenge. Hopefully the outcome in NY will be better.

What a headache! The developer, contractor, architects, and engineers will be suing each other for decades.

The original WTC, the new WTC, the World Financial Center and every building in Battery Park City are built on landfill. None of them are leaning or sinking due to unstable soil. The developers for all of those buildings had the correct foundations engineered and built. The disaster at 161 Maiden is happening because the developers tried to build a foundation that was much less expensive and inferior.

Notice how the depth of the bedrock is reflected in the heights of the buildings in the graphic at 4:30. Tall at the southern tip of Manhattan, then much lower and then tall again you go north.

Not anchoring to bedrock? Where have I heard this before, oh that's right, One Seaport, say hi to your West coast equivalent, the Millennium Tower. Two peas in the same pod.

What's the point of having engineers when time and time again you see things as messed up as this

I keep hearing 'unforeseen'. Building on a soft base and it shifts. Shocking