A crane dangling precariously from the top of a luxury high-rise under construction near Carnegie Hall forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents and hotel guests today.
Police closed off all streets surrounding One57, at 157 W. 57th St., and began evacuating surrounding buildings — sending people into as the streets as Hurricane Sandy approached.
Some were sent to the nearby New York Athletic Club.
“I would say there’s not a lot holding that down,” said one construction worker who rushed to the scene just before 3 p.m. He said no one could ride the elevator up to the crane to access it, due to the wind.
“Just rocking like that is going to wear down the metal.”
When completed, the 90-story One57 will be the city’s tallest residential building and available only to the uber-rich; a full-floor apartment sells for $50 million, several sources have told The Post.
A desk manager at the Salisbury Hotel at 123 W. 57th St. said about 500 guests were being asked to leave their warm rooms with no place to go.
“We are about 200 feet away, and we are concerned,” the manager said.
Phil Wilcock, 50, in town with his wife, celebrating both of their 50th birthdays from Hertfordshire, England, was feeling a bit put out.
“We just went out for lunch and are now being told we can’t go back on the street because a crane just collapsed,” he said. “We may have to find other accommodations — it looks extremely unsafe over there.”
As people were being evacuated and sent into the rain, One57 developer Gary Barnett wouldn’t comment on the imminent danger.
“Sorry, I can’t speak now,” he told The Post before hanging up.
Gilles Legrand, a screenwriter from Paris living at 55th and Seventh Avenue, couldn’t get past police barricades to his apartment.
“How did they not have time to prepare for this?” he wondered. “I don’t know what they are going to do now — they can do nothing.”
Mayor Bloomberg on Saturday issued a stop-work order on all construction sites in the city.
Public records show the site has been rife with complaints for building violations. Building inspectors issued a stop-work order on the crane because of hydraulic leaks and a defective hoist wire found on Aug. 29, records show. Also, inspectors found that the crane operator, Pinnacle Industries of Harrison, NY , did not have daily and monthly inspection records on the crane available at the work site.
The stop-work order stayed in effect until Sept. 10, and the fluid leaks resulted in Pinnacle paying a $1,600 fine. But the crane’s problems were not completely resolved. Oil from the crane leaked into a nearby building, the site’s safety inspector reported to the Buildings Department on Sept. 21. The city did not issue a violation, since the problem was fixed by the time an inspector showed up, records show.
There have also been problems with the crane’s operation. Two pieces of shoring fell to a scaffold on April 19 when a piece at the end of the crane cable came loose. And on May 18, a panel being hoisted by the crane swung out of control and cracked a 10th-floor window.
On March 14, someone complained to the city that the crane was illegally hoisting beams over a sidewalk. Buildings inspectors found nothing illegal happening when they got to the site.
And in February, building inspectors said they issued a violation against the crane operator for failing to report an accident.
Except for the hydraulic-leak problem, none of the complaints about the crane has resulted in any fines or penalties for the contractor.