When New York was built
The city’s footprint map has 1,083,059 buildings, each with its outline from the air, its roof height and the year it went up. Coloured by era, the city sorts itself: the old cores of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights and the Village; the rowhouse belts of Brooklyn, Harlem and the South Bronx; and a vast ring of houses and walk-ups across Queens, the Bronx and southern Brooklyn that went up as the subway reached them.
459,360 of the buildings drawn here, 42.4%, went up between 1920 and 1939, more than in any other two decades. Since 2000, 72,841 have.
| Built | Buildings | Share | Year likely estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1850 | 3,049 | 0.3% | 23.6% |
| 1850–1899 | 41,562 | 3.8% | 67.0% |
| 1900–1919 | 126,232 | 11.7% | 90.1% |
| 1920–1939 | 459,360 | 42.4% | 93.2% |
| 1940–1959 | 201,708 | 18.6% | 89.0% |
| 1960–1979 | 106,124 | 9.8% | 84.6% |
| 1980–1999 | 67,038 | 6.2% | 9.5% |
| 2000–2013 | 53,969 | 5.0% | 0.1% |
| 2014–today | 18,872 | 1.7% | 0.0% |
Most of these years are the city’s estimates. 846,013 buildings, 78.1%, sit on round years the records heap up on (1899, 1900, 1901, 1905, 1910, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1931, 1935, 1938, 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980): 1920 alone holds 129,425, where the years either side hold fewer than 3,000 each. So read an era, not a year. These buildings are drawn paler on the years along the map, and spread over the years around them when the city rises. Where the Landmarks Preservation Commission has dated a building, its date is used instead: 34,478 of them.
How tall
765,454 buildings, 70.7% of the city, have one or two floors, counting garages and sheds; 150 have fifty or more. Floors come from City Planning’s tax-lot data for the main building on each lot, and from the roof height for the rest.
The energy grades
Large buildings report their energy and water use to the city every year under Local Law 84, and post a letter grade at the door under Local Law 33, from the Energy Star score the report earns: A at 85 and up, B from 70, C from 55, D below that. 47,541 of the city’s buildings are covered by a 2023 or 2024 report; 33,160 have a score.
- A: 7,873 buildings (23.7% of those with a score)
- B: 5,547 buildings (16.7% of those with a score)
- C: 5,057 buildings (15.3% of those with a score)
- D: 14,683 buildings (44.3% of those with a score)
The grade shown here is what each building’s latest score earns, not necessarily the grade posted at its door, which comes from an earlier filing. A report can cover several buildings on one lot; it’s given to each building it names, or else to the lot’s main building.
Landmarks and historic districts
37,118 buildings stand in one of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s 141 historic districts, and 3,778 are individual landmarks or on a landmark’s lot. A building in either can’t be altered or torn down without the commission’s approval. Where the commission’s building database has them, a click shows each building’s style and architect.
Who’s in the floodplain
32,042 buildings touch FEMA’s 100-year floodplain on the 2007 map that sets flood insurance in New York. 84,473 more are in the floodplain the city projects for the 2050s, and 35,249 more for the 2080s, as the sea rises. Away from the shore, 15,712 more sit where the Department of Environmental Protection maps flooding from a moderate rainstorm today.
80,927 buildings are inside the area Sandy flooded in 2012. 8,425 buildings in today’s 100-year floodplain have a basement, by City Planning’s survey of building elevations.
These are the city’s and FEMA’s maps of chances, not predictions for any one building. A building is counted in a zone when its middle or any corner of its outline falls in it. What water does to a building depends on its lowest floor and its basement more than its outline.
What the data can’t say
The footprints are outlines traced from aerial surveys, and their heights are roof heights: a tower’s spire and a rowhouse’s parapet are both a roof. 4,915 buildings have no year at all. The energy grades cover only the buildings that report, most of them 25,000 square feet or more. And the map is the city today: a building torn down is gone from it, so the time-lapse shows when today’s buildings went up, not the city as it stood in each year.
