Empire State Building
Built at record speed during the Depression, and for forty years the tallest building in the world.
Every building sits on a lot with a zoning district, a land use category and a community board, the same as any other address. Tap a building to pull its full card.
The longer versionRead ▼
Nothing here is calculated. Every tile opens the citywide address search, which reads zoning and land use from PLUTO and districts from Geoclient. All eleven addresses were run through that search and the card’s own answer recorded.
Five are individual landmarks. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Radio City, Grand Central and the Municipal Building each carry that designation alone. The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower and the Brooklyn Academy of Music share the Brooklyn Academy of Music Historic District; Brooklyn Borough Hall sits in the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District; City Hall is in the African Burial Ground and the Commons district.
Landmark status is not zoning. Grand Central is C5-3, ordinary Midtown commercial. The Chrysler Building straddles C5-3 and C5-2.5, the Empire State C5-3 and C6-4.5. What protects these buildings is the Landmarks Preservation Commission, not the zoning map.
Four of these also appear on the 27 buildings page. Grand Central, the Empire State Building, City Hall and Brooklyn Borough Hall. Same lots, two different collections.
Eleven buildings of note 11
Buildings people can name without being told the address. Each opens its own card: zoning, land use, community board and landmark status.
Chrysler Building
An Art Deco tower that briefly held the world height record, and still the tallest brick building with a steel frame.
Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower
Brooklyn’s tallest building for eighty years, and its most visible landmark from almost anywhere in the borough.
Radio City Music Hall
The largest indoor theatre in the world when it opened in 1932, and the anchor of Rockefeller Center’s public face.
Grand Central Terminal
A Beaux-Arts civic monument whose threatened demolition produced the Supreme Court case that secured American landmark law.
Brooklyn Academy of Music
The oldest continuously operating performing arts centre in the country, and the anchor of its own historic district.
City Hall
Completed in 1812, the oldest city hall in the country still used for its original purpose.
Brooklyn Borough Hall
Brooklyn’s own city hall until consolidation in 1898, and still the seat of the borough presidency.
David N. Dinkins Municipal Building
Built to hold a consolidated city government too large for City Hall, and named for the city’s first Black mayor.
Hook & Ladder 8
A working Tribeca firehouse, and the Ghostbusters headquarters on screen.
The Flatiron Building
A pioneering triangular skyscraper on a wedge of a lot, and the shape that made the block famous.
Related
Every card is generated live by the citywide address search: zoning and land use from PLUTO, districts from Geoclient. Building list and historical context from Sam Roberts, Buildings of Note. Each address verified against the card.