The tallest rental building in this index is 8 Spruce Street in the Financial District: 76 floors and 904 apartments, completed in 2011. Behind it, two buildings tie at 71 floors: SKY on West 42nd Street, and Sven in Long Island City, the tallest in Queens.
In all, 35 buildings in the index reach 50 floors or more and 71 reach 40 or more. The full top 28 is below, ranked by floor count.
The top 28, by floors
Ties share a rank. Floor counts are as the building reports them, and they are not a measure of height: ceiling heights, mechanical floors and skipped numbers mean two 60-floor towers can differ in height by a good margin.
What the list shows
Height arrived after 2010
25 of the 35 buildings with 50 or more floors were completed in 2010 or later. By decade: 1930s: 2; 1990s: 4; 2000s: 4; 2010s: 18; 2020s: 7.
Two of the tallest are from the 1930s
70 Pine (66 floors, 1932) and Twenty Exchange (57 floors, 1931) were built as Financial District office towers and later converted to apartments. That is why the Financial District has both the tallest building on this list and two of its oldest.
Queens is where the new towers are going up
6 of the top 28 are in Queens, all in Long Island City: Sven (71 floors), Tower 28 (58 floors), Gotham Point (57 floors), 5203 Center Boulevard (56 floors), Eagle Lofts (54 floors), Jackson Park (53 floors). Of the buildings with 40 or more floors, 45 are in Manhattan, 16 in Brooklyn and 10 in Queens.
The tallest in each borough
| Borough | Tallest building in the index | Floors | Apartments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 8 Spruce Street | 76 | 904 |
| Brooklyn | AVA DoBro | 58 | 826 |
| Queens | Sven | 71 | 958 |
| Bronx | Lincoln at Bankside | 26 | 921 |
The Bronx entries are mostly low and mid-rise complexes; its tallest here tops out at 26 floors.
Questions this answers
What is the tallest apartment building for rent in New York?
Among the large rental buildings in this index, 8 Spruce Street (also known as New York by Gehry) is the tallest at 76 floors. Several taller towers in the city are condominiums, or mix condos with rentals, and are not counted here.
Are tall buildings bigger buildings?
Not necessarily. The building with the most apartments in the index, StuyTown (8,757), has 13 floors. For a ranking by apartment count, see the 50 largest apartment buildings in New York City.
How these figures were built: every number here comes from the building records in this index as of October 2026: 239 large rental buildings and complexes, 120,584 apartments in all. Current totals are always on the A–Z list of every building. Each record lists the apartment count, floor count, year completed and the company that manages or owns it, and links to the source it was taken from. The index covers large rental buildings, not every building in the city, so a ranking here is a ranking of the index.