NEW YORK _ A prominent architect died on a packed Midtown street Tuesday after being struck by debris that fell from a nearby brick tower.
Erica Tishman, 60, was walking on Seventh Ave. near West 49th Street about 11:45 a.m. when she suddenly fell to the ground bleeding.
Tishman was vice president of Zubatkin, a project management firm.
Raphael Roston, 24, watched medics tend to her from his 13th-story office window across the street as blood pooled around her motionless body. A crowd of shocked passersby swarmed the sidewalk as the medics worked in vain.
"I just saw them working to try to revive her," he said. "It's pretty horrific. We all work right over here. Could have happened to anyone. It's very scary."
Roston said there was a man walking with Tishman when she was struck.
"(He) said he was walking with her. And he just stopped for a second to buy an umbrella," Roston said. "He was pretty freaked out because he said, 'That could have been me.'"
The 17-story office building, 729 Seventh Ave., has several outstanding building violations, city records show.
Eight months ago, the building was slapped with a construction violation for "failure to maintain building wall(s) or appurtenances." The violation _ dated April 29 and listed as still open _ described "damaged terra cotta at areas above 15th floor in several locations which poses a falling hazard for pedestrians."
A worker in the building said he and others inside were evacuated after 3 p.m. The evacuation begin about an hour after two workers from a scaffolding company arrived at the scene.
In November, the city approved plans for facade work to commence on the building, records show. But it appears work did not begin soon enough.
"If there is any wrongdoing, this is something that would almost rise to, in my opinion, a criminal matter," said State Sen. Brad Hoylman. "If that's the case I would hope that the full weight of the law is directed at the responsible parties."
The yellow-brick building is also subject to an open violation for failing to fix a defective elevator, records show.
Erica Tishman appears to have lived a storybook life. Her late father, Samuel Lindenbaum, was a respected land-use attorney who worked for the city's elite builders and landlords _ Harry Helmsley, Leonard Litwin and President Donald Trump, among them.
A graduate of the exclusive Riverdale Country School and both Harvard and Princeton, she was married at the Plaza Hotel to Steven Tishman, the head of mergers and acquisitions at the Houlihan Lokey firm.
The pair practiced philanthropy, donating money to the Education Alliance, a Lower East Side-based community outreach group whose board Tishman served on.
"She was the loveliest, kindest person," said a neighbor. "She has a beautiful family."
Her devastated kin declined to comment as reporters and film crews huddled outside their Park Ave. home.
Mayor Bill de Blasio described Tishman's final moments as "horrible."
"My heart goes out to the family," he said. "We need to know how that happened. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Police initially described the falling object as a brick, but photos of the scene depict what appear to be a cornice or a piece of one of the lion's head gargoyles that line the facade. One witness described a piece of debris that looked like a rock the size of a grapefruit.
City records list the building's owner as 729 Acquisition LLC.
Buildings Department spokeswoman Abigail Kunitz said an investigation into the tragedy is ongoing and that engineers from the agency were performing "a full structural stability inspection of the building."
"The family and friends of the victim are in our thoughts," she said. "No pedestrian should be at risk from dangerous facade conditions. Department of Buildings engineers are on the scene."
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