The New York City Department of Buildings issued 26 active violations on October 21, 2026, citing building owners for failing to file a required retaining wall cycle 3 report by its December 31, 2025 deadline, according to DOB Safety Violations records.
The retaining wall filing program requires owners of qualifying retaining walls to have a licensed professional inspect the structure and submit a periodic compliance report to DOB on a set cycle; cycle 3 reports were due at the end of last year. Each violation in this batch carries the same remarks line — "Failure to file retaining wall cycle 3 report by 12/31/2025" — and the same issue date, indicating a single enforcement sweep rather than 26 separate incidents.
Of the 26 violations, 21 are in Manhattan and concentrated in Washington Heights and Inwood. The heaviest cluster sits along a short stretch of Cabrini Boulevard and Pinehurst Avenue between roughly West 185th and West 187th Streets: addresses cited there include 120, 127, 131, 137, 140, 143, 153 and 160 Cabrini Boulevard, and 116 and 174 Pinehurst Avenue, per DOB records. Several of these share the same block and lot (block 2179, lot 170 and lot 10), suggesting one or two retaining wall structures serve multiple building identification numbers (BINs) along that hillside.
Additional Manhattan addresses cited include 89 Bennett Avenue, 45 Fairview Avenue, 4420 Broadway, 549 Audubon Avenue and 644 West 207th Street in Washington Heights/Inwood; 1012 Riverside Drive and 52 Haven Avenue in Washington Heights (South); 123 Morningside Drive in Morningside Heights; 183 East 98th Street in East Harlem; 65 Jefferson Street on the Lower East Side; and a group of four addresses on East 35th and East 36th Streets in Murray Hill-Kips Bay — 207, 208, 221 and 223 Rear East 36th/35th Streets. One Bronx address, 65 Terrace View Avenue in Kingsbridge-Marble Hill, was also cited.
All 26 violations carry an "Active" status as of this writing, per DOB records. DOB's retaining wall inspection program applies to walls meeting the agency's height and location criteria, typically those supporting significant grade changes near public ways — common across the steep topography of Washington Heights and Inwood, which helps explain the geographic concentration here.
Separately, DOB's complaints dataset logged 100 new complaints citywide over the past two days across categories including elevator, plumbing, construction and structural issues; none in that sample correspond to these retaining wall addresses, and a complaint alone is an unverified allegation, not a finding.