New York has lost the title of the “City of skyscrapers” as at least two other cities in the world have more skyscrapers. However, it still has one of the highest concentrations of high-rise buildings in the world. A high-rise in NYC is any building taller than 75 feet from the minimum level of access provided for a fire department vehicle. This is an official building code classification.
A different interpretation is that a building has to have at least one occupied floor above the 75 feet mark (from the fire department access threshold). One NYC listing website has its own classification of a high-rise – a building with more than 35 floors.
From a height perspective, all NYC buildings can be categorized into low-rise or high-rise. Other height-based classifiers like skyscrapers (buildings taller than 150 meters or 492 feet), even though they may have informal definitions in the market, may not be officially recognized by the building code.
A high-rise in NYC is a building meeting the city’s height criteria. But it can also refer to an apartment in such a building. Hundreds of buildings in NYC qualify as high-rises, representing hundreds of thousands of high-rise apartments. A high-rise in NYC may have to comply with specific building code requirements, including fire protection and egress. High-rises above a specific threshold (120 feet) are also required to have a Fire Service Access Elevator (FSAE).
Also read: The NYC House Hunt: Your To-Do List for Finding the Perfect Home
