NEW YORK — The sagging upper floors of a Midtown Manhattan building under construction that threatened to collapse and caused a massive evacuation of the area have been stabilized with galvanized steel beams and emergency jacks, city officials said Wednesday as Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised a thorough probe into the near catastrophe.

Meanwhile, though, some anxious neighbors are saying just take the whole thing down to make sure that another — possibly disastrous — collapse doesn’t occur.

“As soon as we answer the emergency questions around safety in this moment we are going to be conducting a full investigation as to how we got to this point,” Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference. “(There was) clearly a breakdown in that process.”

As of Wednesday morning, the frozen zone established around 235 E. 42nd St. had been drastically reduced, with only East 42nd Street and East 43rd Street between Second and Third avenues being closed to the public, as city Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani had announced at a presser outside the building late Tuesday.

The steel-framed building formerly held offices for Pfizer, but is now being renovated into luxury residential housing, the largest such conversion in city history. The project is slated to create 1,602 apartments.

Once it appeared that the building had stopped shifting on Tuesday afternoon, emergency crews went up to the 21st floor and began shoring up areas around where steel beams had visibly buckled during the ambitious construction project that planned to add 11 more floors to the building.

“The building is stable and we are confident in the emergency plan we have now,” Tigani said.

The building’s future remains unknown, city officials said.

On Wednesday, jittery neighbors said the near disaster is definitely keeping them on edge. Some thought the building should be razed, while others said maybe it could be salvaged — but that safety must be foremost.

Madan KC, an employee at Fresh Food Center, at 44th Street and Second Avenue, felt the building is simply “too dangerous.”

“I think they have to redo the building, demolish it and rebuild it,” the store worker said. “They continue to work — and what if it happens again? Just rebuild it. It seemed like it was going to collapse. It’s too dangerous. It’s better to start over and redo it.”

Meanwhile, Jeremy Lim, who lives in the area, was wary for environmental reasons about taking the structure down.

“I feel like demolishing it would cause air pollution, just to limit that,” he said. At the same time, he added, “It’s probably not the best to continue working in there unless they are really confident things are safe.”

Aria Q, another local resident, said, “I’m concerned how they’re going to fix it and how all of this is going to be taken care of. Adding more apartments isn’t a bad thing if it’s truly stabilized, but I think it’s just now being super careful moving forward and making sure everything is OK before they continue to work in there.”

Mamdani and the DOB both said an investigation wouldn’t begin until after the building is stabilized.

The investigation will include “a detailed review of all associated plans and construction documents, interviews with witnesses and responsible parties, a full inspection sweep of the entire construction site, and review of available video and photo evidence,” a DOB spokesman said.

“(It) will help determine how this failure occurred, what events led to the failure, and how similar failures can be prevented in the future,” the spokesman said. “Enforcement actions for responsible parties are pending the results of our ongoing investigation.”

By Wednesday morning, emergency crews had installed emergency beams between the 18th and 23rd floors and were working on floors 17 and 24, Mamdani said.

“They’re going to be working through the day to get all the way up to the roof and all the way down to floor nine,” the mayor said. “It is a 37-floor building.”

The full emergency plan involves structural reinforcement of all floors beginning on the ninth floor all the way up to the roof, a DOB spokesman said.

“As soon as this emergency work is concluded, DOB is going to be conducting a rigorous assessment and ensuring that the plans and the site are fully compliant with all codes before any non-emergency work moves forward,” the mayor said.

Three adjoining buildings — 815 Second Ave., 235 E. 43rd St. and 231 E. 43rd St. — remain under a full vacate order. Residents living in 217 E. 43rd St. are allowed to return home, but the restaurant on the first floor remains under a vacate order, Tigani said.

When city officials feared the former Pfizer building would collapse Tuesday morning, the FDNY cordoned off a frozen zone from East 40th Street to East 45th Street between First and Third avenues.

Construction crews were evacuated from the building at 8 a.m. Tuesday. Firefighters were first called to the scene for a report of bricks falling from the 37-story building’s facade. But when they arrived, firefighters learned that two columns had buckled on the 21st and 22nd floors, causing floors to sag between the 21st and 26th floors.

“The box beams, the steel beams, started to bend and deflect from the weight (of the building),” FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito said Tuesday. “We began evacuating and the building continued to move as we are on the scene.”

City officials said the building has not shown any signs of shifting since Tuesday morning. A vacate order for the site remains in effect, barring all non-emergency work from proceeding until the order is lifted, a DOB spokesman said.

No injuries have been reported. By Tuesday afternoon, the shifting had stopped long enough to bring in emergency crews to brace the impacted floors, officials said.

“We have not seen any movement from our monitoring positions set up outside and inside the building,” Tigani said. “If there is any movement, we have protocols to quickly remove people from the building.”

The DOB commissioner said the city has been in constant discussions with the property’s owner, as well as the contractor. An independent engineering company has also been brought in as a third party to make recommendations on how to stabilize the building.

Developers were allowed to gut and renovate the building last summer. Since then, contractors have been hit with more than $30,000 in workplace safety violations, city records show.

The violations include reports of construction crews “blowing material off the roof with a leaf blower,” as well as unsafe demolition practices.

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