FDNY combs through the rubble following the partial collapse of a building located at 1915 Billingsley Terrace, which took place on Dec. 11, 2023.
Photo Dean Moses
A New York state-licensed professional engineer based in Manhattan has been suspended after a tactical construction error allegedly caused a seven-story building in Morris Heights to partially collapse on Dec. 11, leading the property owners to hire a new engineer to take over repair work at the site.
On Friday, Dec. 15, Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s Department of Buildings (DOB), announced that the city had suspended professional engineer Richard Koenigsberg from his authority to inspect exterior walls of the city’s buildings to assess their condition, following the partial collapse of a building located at 1915 Billingsley Terrace, after Koenigsberg had misdiagnosed a load-bearing column as a decorative column in plans filed with DOB in June.
According to DOB, permits were still active for the Billingsley Terrace structure at the time of the horrific occurrence. The city is also seeking to permanently revoke the aforementioned authority through the Office Administrative Trials and Hearings.
The DOB Now Public Portal shows that Koenigsberg of Koenigsberg Engineering, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was the engineer responsible for the construction mishap, after he used a decorative column as opposed to a weight-bearing column,on the building’s exterior.
“There are over a million buildings across our city, and it is crucial that New Yorkers are safe in every one of those buildings,” Adams said, “But when those who are entrusted to keep us safe cut corners and make catastrophic mistakes, we’re going to take swift action and hold them accountable.”
According to several reports, the building was considered “unsafe” back in 2020 by property management, with construction work to repair the façade of the building only commencing at the midway point…
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