Manhattan’s skyline, with its many skyscrapers, is globally recognizable and the city is home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. New York City has approximately 5,538 high-rise buildings, and 50 skyscrapers taller than 200 meters.
This number is the largest of any city in the United States, and second in the world, behind Hong Kong. New York has architecturally notable buildings in a wide range of styles. These include the Woolworth Building (1913), a Gothic skyscraper built in a detailed revival of the Gothic style. The Zoning Resolution of 1916 was a measure created primarily to stop massive buildings like the Equitable Building from allowing sunlight and air to reach down to the street.
A particularly notable example of the international type in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), which stands out for its facade, using visible copper accent beams to emphasize the building’s structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is a prime example of green design in American skyscrapers.
New York City’s grand homes are often defined by the classic cobblestone, row houses, and homes built during a period of rapid growth between 1870 – 1930. Stone and brick became the city’s building materials and were chosen instead of wood after the great fire of 1835.
A special feature of many buildings in the city is the wooden roof with water towers. In the 1800s, the city required their installation in buildings taller than six stories to avoid the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could burst municipal water pipes.
Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, including Jackson Heights in Queens, which became more accessible with the expansion of the subway.
Skyscrapers
New York City has two distinct high-rise clusters: Midtown Manhattan and Lower Manhattan, each with its own unique recognizable skyline. Midtown Manhattan, the world’s largest central business district, is home to notable buildings such as the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Citigroup Center, and Rockefeller Center. Lower Manhattan is the third largest central business district in the United States (after Midtown and Chicago’s Loop).
Lower Manhattan was marked by the presence of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center from their completion in 1973 until their destruction in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
During the first decade of the 21st century, Lower Manhattan saw rapid redevelopment including the new World Trade Center. Lower Manhattan’s skyline received new designs from architects such as Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry. Goldman Sachs is building a 225-meter-tall, 43-story building across the street from the World Trade Center site.
New York City has a long history of tall buildings. It has 10 buildings that hold the worldwide title as the tallest fully habitable structures in history, although half the city has since been demolished. The first building to hold the title of world’s tallest in New York was the New York World Building in 1890. Later, New York hosted the tallest building in the world for 75 consecutive years, starting with the Park Row Building in 1899. to One World Trade Center, with the completion of the Sears Tower in 1974. One of the world’s first skyscrapers, still standing in the city, is the Park Row Building, built in 1899.
Brooklyn’s high-rises form a third, much smaller skyline. The high-rise buildings in downtown Brooklyn are centered around a major New York City subway hub. Downtown Brooklyn is experiencing an extensive building boom, with new high-rise luxury towers, retail space and a new arena in the planning stage. The building boom in Brooklyn met with massive backlash from local citizens and environmental groups, who claimed that Brooklyn must maintain its human scale.
The borough of Queens has also seen its own skyline development in recent years with a Citigroup office building (which is currently the tallest building in New York outside of Manhattan), and west Queens is developing several residential towers along its waterfront East River.
The Empire State Building, a 102-story Art Deco modern building, was designed by Shreve Lamb and Harmon and completed in 1931.
It was the tallest building in the world for 42 years. The tower is named after the New York State nickname and is currently the tallest building in the city. It was the first building to exceed 100+ floors, and has one of the world’s most visited observation decks, which has been visited by over 110 million people since its completion. The building was built in a record time of 14 months.
The Chrysler Building is a distinctive symbol of New York completed in 1930 and standing at 319 meters on the east side of Manhattan. It was originally built for the Chrysler Corporation. The building is currently co-owned by TMW Real Estate (75%) and Tishman Speyer Properties (25%). The Chrysler Building was the first structure in the world to exceed the 305 meter mark.
The GE Building is a slender Art Deco skyscraper and the focal point of Rockefeller Center. At 259 meters, with 70 floors, it is the seventh tallest building in New York and the 30th tallest in the United States. Built in 1933 and originally called the RCA Building, it is one of New York’s most famous and recognizable skyscrapers. The frieze above the main entrance was executed by Lee Lawrie and depicts Sophia, along with a scripture saying “Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your days”, taken from the book of Isaiah , 33:6.
International Style was a groundbreaking exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that completely changed the face of architecture in New York and the world. Mies van der Rohe, was the focus of the exhibition, who later built the Seagram Building on Park Avenue at 53rd Street.
One of the most important buildings for modern architecture, the Seagram Building transformed the Midtown area, the development of tall buildings, and the history of architecture. Other architects reproduced details from the Seagram within New York and around the world for decades after its completion in the late 1950s. The bronze extrusions attached to the columns exemplify this trend in tall building design that can be seen in many cities.
The MetLife Building, formerly the Pan Am Building, was the tallest commercial office building in the world when it opened on March 7, 1963. It is an important part of the Manhattan skyline and one of the fifty tallest buildings in the United States.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were the tallest buildings in the city from 1973 until their destruction in the attacks of September 11, 2001. The towers stood at 417 meters and 415 meters respectively, both with 110 floors. The North Tower’s 110 meter antenna housed most of the city’s telecommunications, while the South Tower housed a popular observation deck. They were the tallest buildings in the world until the 443-meter Sears Tower in Chicago was completed in 1974.
Citigroup Center is a 59-story office tower located at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue in midtown Manhattan. It is considered one of the most important post-war skyscrapers erected in New York. Its striking design with its steeply pitched roof, as well as its elegant aluminum-clad facade gave the skyscraper an instant architectural mark.
The sloping roof houses the building’s mechanical and ventilation systems. The designers installed aluminum cladding on the facade to reduce the weight load for the building’s foundation and supporting structures, but this came at a corresponding cost. When the building was erected in 1977 it was discovered that the lightweight facade made the building vulnerable and swaying under high wind conditions.
Expressing concern that the building could topple over in very strong winds, the building’s engineers installed a device (tuned mass damper) on the roof which acts as a compensation for the building’s oscillations.
The Time Warner Center is a mixed-use skyscraper at Columbus Circle on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It had attracted much attention as the first major building completed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has become known to many New Yorkers as “the new twin towers.” Additional publicity came in 2003 when David Martinez paid $45 million for the penthouse, a New York home sale record.
The Hearst Tower, located in Midtown Manhattan, is another example of the new generation of “green” skyscraper design in New York. The Hearst Tower is a skyscraper made of glass and steel that rests on the base of the original
Houses
The period of rapid growth of the city between 1870 – 1930 included a significant development of residential neighborhoods, home to newly built houses of brownstones, terraced houses and apartment buildings, which expressed a very different character from the skyscrapers that existed in the commercial areas. areas of the city.
By 1870, stone and brick had become established as building materials, as the construction of timber-framed houses was greatly limited in the wake of the Great Fire of 1835.
Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own bedrock of limestone, New York always ended up with stone buildings from a network of quarries, sometimes quite far away, which had a variety of textures and shades of stone and this is noticeable in many in city buildings.
In pre-railroad days, stones were transported up the Hudson River or along the Atlantic coast from New England quarries.
Although trains later brought marble from Vermont and granite from Minnesota, sandstone from Connecticut was the most popular material in the construction of New York row houses in the late 19th century, and thus the term brownstones became synonymous with single-family homes. in series.
Manhattan’s residential neighborhoods include 19th-century row houses, pre-World War II apartment buildings, and modern postwar high-rise buildings. Beautiful early 20th century residential buildings line both sides of Central Park along Fifth Avenue and Central Park West, as well as Riverside Drive, which overlooks Riverside Park and the Hudson River.
Starting in the 1950s, public housing projects dramatically changed the image of the city. New, large-scale (often high-rise) housing estates replaced older buildings, removing objects and landmarks that would today be considered of historical value.
During this period, many of these new projects were built in an effort to renew urban areas championed by famed urban planner Robert Moses. The resulting housing projects suffered from inconsistent funding, poor maintenance, and high crime, leading many to consider the projects a failure.
