Architecture of New York City
The building form most closely associated with New York City is the skyscraper, which has shifted many commercial and residential districts from low-rise to high-rise. Surrounded mostly by water, the city has amassed one of the largest and most varied collection of skyscrapers in the world.[1]
New York has architecturally significant buildings in a wide range of styles spanning distinct historical and cultural periods. These include the
The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant
Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the
Concentrations of buildings
New York has two main concentrations of high-rise buildings:
In the first decade of the 21st century, Lower Manhattan saw reconstruction, which included One World Trade Center within the new World Trade Center complex. The Downtown skyline received new designs from such architects as Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry. In 2010, a 749-foot (228 m), 43-story tower named 200 West Street was built for Goldman Sachs across the street from the World Trade Center site.
New York City has a long history of tall buildings. It has been home to 10 buildings that have held the
The high-rise buildings of Brooklyn constitute a third, much smaller skyline. Downtown Brooklyn is also experiencing an extensive building boom, with new high rise luxury residential towers, commercial space and a new arena in the planning stages. The building boom in Brooklyn has had a great deal of opposition from local civic and environmental groups which contend that Brooklyn needs to maintain its human scale. The borough of Queens has also been developing its own skyline in recent years with One Court Square (formerly the Citigroup Building, currently the tallest building in NYC outside Manhattan), and the Queens West development of several residential towers along the East River waterfront.
The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setback in new buildings, and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.[2]
History
The
Early 20th century
The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the eponymous sewing machine manufacturer, stood 612 feet (187 m) high until 1967, when it became the tallest building ever demolished.[18] The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing 700 feet (210 m) at the foot of Madison Avenue, wrested the title of world's tallest building in 1909, with a tower reminiscent of St Mark's Campanile in Venice.[19] The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, took the title in 1913, topping off at 792 feet (241 m).[20] Structures such as the Equitable Building of 1915, which rises vertically forty stories from the sidewalk, prompted the passage of the 1916 Zoning Resolution, requiring new buildings to contain setbacks withdrawing progressively at a defined angle from the street as they rose, in order to preserve a view of the sky at street level.[21]
Grand Central Terminal is located in East Midtown close to the Chrysler Building. The railroad terminal, completed in 1913, is the third on its site.[22] It was built in the Beaux-Arts style by the firms Reed and Stem and Warren and Wetmore.[23] It became a National Historic Landmark in 1976.[24]
The
Both buildings were soon surpassed with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its tower reaching 1,250 feet (380 m) at the top of the building. The 203-foot (62 m) high pinnacle was later added bringing the total height of the building to 1,453 ft (443 m).
Late 20th century
In 1961, the
The MetLife Building, formerly the Pan Am Building, was the largest commercial office building in the world when it opened on March 7, 1963.[49] It stands directly north of Grand Central Terminal.[50] The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 m), the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972 until they were surpassed by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974 (formerly known as the Sears Tower, located in Chicago).[51] One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.[52]
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 to be in erected in New York City. The striking design of the steeply slanted roof, the sleek aluminum-clad facade, and its base on four stilts over a church also on the site made the skyscraper an instant architectural icon. The sloping roof houses the building's mechanical and ventilation systems. The designers settled on an aluminum-clad facade to reduce the weight load on the building's foundation and support structures, since its entire weight would be supported by stilts.[53] To prevent swaying, a "tuned mass damper" was later added on the roof.[54]
21st century
The
Demolished buildings
Tallest buildings
The 15 tallest buildings:
Std. rank |
Name | Year |
Location (Midtown & Lower Manhattan) |
Height
ft (m) |
Floors[A] | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
One World Trade Center | 2014 | 285 Fulton Street | 1,776 (541) | 94[B] | [56] |
2
|
Central Park Tower | 2021 | 225 West 57th Street | 1,550 (472) | 99 | [57] |
3
|
111 West 57th Street | 2022 | 111 West 57th Street | 1,428 (435) | 85 | [58] |
4
|
One Vanderbilt | 2020 | 1 Vanderbilt Avenue | 1,401 (427) | 73 | [59] |
5
|
432 Park Avenue | 2015 | 432 Park Avenue | 1,397 (426) | 85 | [60] |
6
|
270 Park Avenue | 2025 | 270 Park Avenue | 1,388 (423) | 60 | [61] |
7
|
30 Hudson Yards | 2019 | 500 West 33rd Street
|
1,270 (387) | 73 | [62] |
8
|
Empire State Building | 1931 | 350 Fifth Avenue | 1,250 (381) | 102[C] | [63] |
9
|
Bank of America Tower | 2009 | 1101 Sixth Avenue | 1,200 (366) | 55 | [64] |
10
|
3 World Trade Center | 2018 | 175 Greenwich Street | 1,079 (329) | 80 | [65] |
11
|
The Brooklyn Tower | 2022 | 9 DeKalb Avenue | 1,066 (325) | 74 | [66] |
12
|
53W53 | 2019 | 53 West 53rd Street | 1,050 (320) | 77 | [67] |
13
|
Chrysler Building | 1930 | 405 Lexington Avenue | 1,046 (319) | 77 | [68] |
14
|
The New York Times Building | 2007 | 620 Eighth Avenue | 1,046 (319) | 52 | [69] |
15
|
The Spiral | 2022 | 435 Tenth Avenue | 1,031 (314) | 66 | [70] |
- ^ Floor counts often vary among sources, this list uses the number most widely reported in reference.
- ^ The building is 104 standard floors tall and most references supply this figure. However, only 94 actual, physically usable, stories are present; see the skyscraper's main article for more details.
- ^ References typically use the 102 floors figure, however some state a value of 103 floors instead due to the presence of an encircling balcony above the 102nd floor. See Empire State Building#Opening and early years and Empire State Building#Above the 102nd floor for a detailed explanation.
Residential architecture
-
Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence.
-
A large single family home inForest Hills Gardens, Queens.
-
A Tudor Revival style mansion in Flushing, Queens constructed in 1924.
-
A home in Tottenville, Staten Island.
-
Houses placed on Hawtree Creek in Howard Beach, Queens.
-
21st century residential towers inLong Island City, Queens
-
High-rise condominiums on the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront.
-
Queen Anne architecture c. 1899 in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.
-
Upper West Sideof Manhattan
-
Tenement buildings in the Lower East Side.
-
Brownstone townhouses in Harlem.
-
Apartment buildings in Hell's Kitchen.
-
Manhattan House buildings in the Upper East Side.
As New York City grew, it spread outward from where it originally began at the southern-tip of
The development of these areas was often spurred by the opening of bridges and the connection of boroughs via public transportation. For example, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883 and connects Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River. Brooklyn Heights, a nabe on the Brooklyn waterfront, is often credited as the United States' first suburb.[73] The bridge allowed an easier commute between Brooklyn and Manhattan and spurred rapid construction, development, and redevelopment. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, completed in 1964,[74] opened up many areas of Staten Island to residential and commercial development, especially in the central and southern parts of the borough, which had previously been largely undeveloped. Staten Island's population doubled from about 221,000 in 1960 to about 443,000 in 2000.
By 1870, stone and brick had become firmly established as the building materials of choice, as the construction of wood-frame houses had been greatly limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.[9][10] Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own limestone bedrock, New York has always drawn its building stone from a network of quarries, sometimes quite distant, which is evident in the variety of textures and hues of stone seen in the city's buildings. In the days before rail, stones were floated down the Hudson River or along the Atlantic Seaboard from pits in New England. While trains brought marble from Vermont and granite from Minnesota, it was Connecticut brownstone that was so popular in the construction of New York's row homes in the late 19th century that the term brownstone became synonymous with row house.
Beginning in the 1950s, public housing projects dramatically changed the city's appearance. New, large scale (frequently high-rise) residential complexes replaced older communities, at times removing artifacts and landmarks that would now be considered of historic value. During this period, many of these new projects were built in an effort towards urban renewal championed by the famed urban planner Robert Moses. The resulting housing projects have suffered from inconsistent funding, poor maintenance, and high crime, prompting many to consider these projects a failure.
A distinctive feature of residential (and many commercial) buildings in New York City is the presence of wooden roof-mounted water towers, which were required on all buildings higher than six stories by city ordinance in the 19th century because the municipal water pipes could not withstand the extraordinarily high pressure necessary to deliver water to the top stories of high-rise buildings.[13]
Bridges and tunnels
-
High Bridge (1848)
-
Brooklyn Bridge (1883)
-
Williamsburg Bridge (1903)
-
Queensboro Bridge (1909)
-
Manhattan Bridge (1909)
-
George Washington Bridge (1931)
-
Whitestone Bridge (1939)
New York City is located on one of the world's largest natural harbors.[75] The boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are their own islands, while Queens and Brooklyn are located at the west-end of the larger Long Island. This precipitates a need for an extensive infrastructure of bridges and tunnels. Nearly all of the city's major bridges and several of its tunnels, have broken or set records. For example, the Holland Tunnel was the world's first vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927.[76]
The
Street grid
Formulated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, New York adopted a visionary proposal to develop Manhattan north of 14th Street with a regular street grid. The economic logic underlying the plan, which called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south, and 155 orthogonal cross streets, was that the grid's regularity would provide an efficient means to develop new real estate property.[79] Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, disapproved.[80]
See also
- List of buildings
- List of National Historic Landmarks in New York
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks
- List of tallest buildings in New York City
- List of cities with most skyscrapers
- Art Deco architecture of New York City
References
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- ^ Pogrebin, Robin (April 16, 2006). "7 World Trade Center and Hearst Building: New York's Test Cases for Environmentally Aware Office Towers". The New York Times. Retrieved July 19, 2006.
- ISBN 0-231-06297-4.
- ^ Garb, Margaret (March 1, 1998). "If You're Thinking of Living In/Riverdale, the Bronx; A Community Jealous of Its Open Space". The New York Times. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "New York Metro: 6 Affordable Neighborhoods". nymag.com. September 17, 2001. Archived from the original on June 30, 2018.
- ^ Shaman, Diana (February 8, 2004). "If You're Thinking of Living In/Douglaston, Queens; Timeless City Area, With a Country Feel". The New York Times. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ a b Lankevich (1998), pp. 82–83.
- ^ a b Wilson, Rufus Rockwell (1902). New York: Old & New: Its Story, Streets, and Landmarks. J. B. Lippincott. p. 354.
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- ^ ""Grand Central Station" August 11, 1976, by Carolyn Pitts" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination. National Park Service. August 11, 1976.
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- ^ Pierpont, Claudia Roth (November 18, 2002). "The Silver Spire: How two men's dreams changed the skyline of New York". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on August 25, 2004. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
- ^ Seythal, Thomas (March 15, 2019). Hummel, Tassilo (ed.). "Austria's Signa, RFR Holding buy New York's Chrysler Building". Reuters. Retrieved May 13, 2019.
- ^ Lily Katz (March 8, 2019). "Chrysler Building to Sell to RFR for About $150 Million". Bloomberg News. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
- ^ "FIRST BUILDING TO RISE ABOVE 1,000 FEET HIGH" (PDF). The Troy Times. Troy, New York. April 4, 1930. p. 9. Retrieved November 3, 2017 – via Fultonhistory.com.
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- ^ Hevesi, Dennis (July 14, 1988). "30 Rock? RCA? NBC? No, G.E.!". The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
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- ^ "Seagram's Bronze Tower" (PDF). Architectural Forum. 109. July 1958.
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- ^ About the Landmarks Preservation Commission Archived April 25, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Accessed November 20, 2016.
- ^ "Requiem For Penn Station" Archived August 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, CBS News, October 13, 2002. Accessed May 17, 2007.
- ^ "Rebuild Penn Station A movement dedicated to the reconstruction of Penn Station". Rebuild Penn Station. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
Our mission is to dramatically enhance the quality of life in the New York City metropolitan area by rebuilding the original Pennsylvania Station as the centerpiece of a new world-class transportation network for the entire region.
- ^ Horsley, Carter C. The MetLife Building, The Midtown Book. Accessed September 30, 2007. "When it was completed, the 2,400,000 sq ft (220,000 m2) building became the world's largest office building in bulk, a title it would lose a few years later to 55 Water Street downtown."
- ^ "PAN AM BUILDING DEDICATED IN N.Y.; 100 Million Structure, 59 Stories Tall, City's Biggest Other Speakers at Event". The New York Times. March 8, 1963. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
- ^ Barss, Karen. "The History of Skyscrapers: A race to the top" Archived August 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Information Please. Accessed May 17, 2007. "The Empire State Building would reign supreme among skyscrapers for 41 years until 1972, when it was surpassed by the World Trade Center (1,368 feet, 110 stories). Two years later, New York City lost the distinction of housing the tallest building when the Willis Tower was constructed in Chicago (1450 feet, 110 stories)."
- ^ DeGregory, Priscilla (November 3, 2014). "1 World Trade Center is open for business". New York Post. Archived from the original on November 13, 2014. Retrieved November 18, 2014.
- ^ Postal, Matthew A (December 6, 2016). "Citicorp Center" (PDF). New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
- ^ Greer, William R. (October 24, 1982). "Rx for Swaying Skyscrapers". The New York Times. Retrieved July 25, 2009.
- ^ Inside the Time Warner Center, Newsday, February 19, 2004
- ^ "One World Trade Center - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. September 12, 2017. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "Central Park Tower - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. September 10, 2020. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "111 West 57th Street - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. August 22, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "One Vanderbilt Avenue - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. April 11, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "432 Park Avenue - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. August 22, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "JPMorgan Chase World Headquarters - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. April 15, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "30 Hudson Yards - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. September 27, 2019. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "Empire State Building - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. October 13, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "Bank of America Tower - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. October 13, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "3 World Trade Center - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. October 13, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "The Brooklyn Tower - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. October 22, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "53 West 53 - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. September 30, 2019. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "Chrysler Building - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. January 22, 2019. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "New York Times Building - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. December 16, 2009. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ "The Spiral - The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. April 7, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ Goldstein, Jared (March 22, 2010). "The Battery: Where Manhattan Begins!". Uncle Sam's New York Tours.
- ^ "upper Manhattan history - Ephemeral New York". ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com.
- ^ "The South Brooklyn Network -- Brooklyn Heights". Archived from the original on February 18, 2007. Retrieved February 8, 2012.
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- ^ "Holland Tunnel (I-78)". www.nycroads.com.
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- ^ Reps, John W. (October 28, 2021). "1811 Commissioners Plan for New York". Urban Planning, 1794-1918. Retrieved November 17, 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-306-82284-1.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-8129-3107-5.
- Federal Writers' Project (1939). The WPA Guide to New York City, The New Press (1995 reissue).
External links
- Downtown Brooklyn Development - New York City Dept. Of Planning
- Lower Manhattan Development - Lower Manhattan Development Corp.
- The City Review - information on buildings and architecture by neighborhood
- Tom Fletcher's New York Architecture Images and Notes ...
- Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. "New York City Buildings". Research Guides. New York: Columbia University. Archived from the original on February 23, 2014. Retrieved February 6, 2014.