Three quarters of the apartments in this index’s single buildings sit in buildings finished since 2000. Of 224 indexed single buildings with a known construction year, 160 were built in 2000 or later, and they hold 71,480 of the 95,171 apartments counted here. The 2010s alone account for 82 buildings and 38,457 apartments — 40% of the total, more than every decade before 2000 combined. The index’s 15 multi-building complexes are counted separately below, because a single campus of dozens of buildings would swamp any one decade.
Large apartment buildings by era
| Era | Buildings | Apartments | Share | Avg. apartments | Avg. floors | Largest of the era |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1960 | 12 | 4,282 | 4% | 357 | 28 | Twenty Exchange (720) |
| 1960s | 6 | 1,673 | 2% | 279 | 22 | Dwell95 (507) |
| 1970s | 11 | 5,385 | 6% | 490 | 31 | Manhattan Plaza (1,689) |
| 1980s | 17 | 5,584 | 6% | 328 | 27 | Manhattan Park (880) |
| 1990s | 18 | 6,767 | 7% | 376 | 35 | One Columbus Place (729) |
| 2000s | 48 | 18,292 | 19% | 381 | 30 | Silver Towers (1,359) |
| 2010s | 82 | 38,457 | 40% | 469 | 35 | Jackson Park (1,871) |
| 2020s | 30 | 14,731 | 15% | 491 | 36 | Gotham Point (1,132) |
Buildings have been getting bigger
The average indexed building finished in the 2000s holds 381 apartments. In the 2010s that rises to 469, and in the 2020s so far to 491 — about 29% larger in two decades, with most of the jump coming between the 2000s and the 2010s. Average height moved less, from 30 floors in the 2000s to 36 in the 2020s, so much of the growth is coming from wider floor plates and larger sites rather than simply taller towers.
The 1960s are the outlier in the other direction: six indexed single buildings averaging 279 apartments and 22 floors, the smallest and lowest of any era here.
The geography moved out of Manhattan
This is the sharpest pattern in the data. Of the 64 indexed single buildings finished before 2000, 62 are in Manhattan — the only exceptions are one pre-1960 building in the Bronx and one 1990s building in Brooklyn. Large single-building rental construction, as captured by this index, was a Manhattan activity almost exclusively.
That breaks in the 2010s. Of 82 buildings finished that decade, 39 are in Manhattan and 43 are in Brooklyn (28) or Queens (15). In the 2020s the balance tips further: 8 in Manhattan, 15 in Brooklyn, 7 in Queens. The Long Island City waterfront and Downtown Brooklyn are doing work that used to happen in Midtown.
The complexes
Before 2000, much of New York’s large-scale rental housing was built as multi-building campuses rather than single towers. The index holds eleven pre-2000 complexes, with 23,070 apartments between them: The Beaux Arts (1930, 643), StuyTown (1947, 8,757), Peter Cooper Village (1947, 2,495), Briar Hill (1958, 806), Park West Village (1960, 2,500), Waterside Plaza (1974, 1,470), Independence Plaza (1975, 1,328), Kips Bay Court (1975, 894), Gateway Plaza (1983, 1,700), Normandie Court (1987, 1,477) and West End Towers (1994, 1,000). That is nearly as many as all 64 pre-2000 single buildings in the index combined (23,691), and StuyTown alone accounts for 8,757 of them across 89 buildings.
The form is returning, mostly outside Manhattan: the four complexes finished since 2020 — Lincoln at Bankside, Third at Bankside, The Arches and Astoria West — are in Queens and the Bronx, with the two phases of Bankside on the Mott Haven waterfront the largest of them.
The oldest buildings here
Twelve indexed single buildings predate 1960, eleven of them in Manhattan — five in the Financial District and five on the Upper West Side, several of them former hotels now run as rental apartments. The oldest carries a construction year of 1898. Pre-war buildings at this scale are rarer in the index than in the city, because this index tracks large multi-family rental buildings and most pre-war housing stock of that size is organised differently.
How this is counted
Every figure on this page is computed from the 239 records in this index, not from a city-wide dataset. The era table covers the 224 single-building records, all of which carry a construction year. The 15 multi-building complexes are discussed separately. Years and apartment counts are compiled from public sources, and where a record has a known source that URL is published on the record so any figure can be traced and checked.
The index is a curated and growing set, not a census. It does not yet cover the city evenly — Staten Island is absent and the Bronx has 5 records — so the era and borough patterns above describe what is indexed, and should be read as a strong signal about large rental construction rather than a complete account of it. Where a figure could not be confirmed it is left empty rather than estimated.
Browse the index
- The largest apartment buildings in New York City — the top 50 ranked by apartment count.
- All 239 buildings, A–Z — the full index on one page.
- The building directory — every record, with maps and nearby buildings.
- By borough: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx.