There's a story about construction causing cracking in a neighboring building in the Post, and it worries Gothamist a little. In this instance, an eight-family building in the East Village was evacuated for the second time in a week, as "cracks in the wall expanded because of vibrations from a construction site next door." The first evacuation was also from the wall cracks (there's really no elegant way to describe it), but the Department of Buildings said the building was safe. One resident told the Post that yesterday construction workers first hit the building with equipment and then put metal plates on the sidewalk, and while the DoB says the building is still safe, but said one building wall should be shored up with crushed stone. Huh, needing to shore up a wall with crushed stone doesn't sound like it's that safe, but better one wall versus all four.
But this makes Gothamist wonder if residents in older buildings need to super-vigilant in monitoring their buildings. Because how much does anyone really know about their building's structure? PATH service was once stopped because it was causing a building to shake and sometimes music causes buildings to buckle. Here's contact information for the Department of Buildings, but hopefully your super is on top of things. And if you want a sense of whether or not new construction will cause you agita, go to Curbed.
