Figure: Tall Buildings by Decade, 1900 to 2014.
These graphs show the location of tall buildings (10 stories or higher) in Manhattan as of 2014 by the decade in which they were constructed. They suggest the evolution of tall building locations across the 20th century. In the early decades of the skyscraper, tall buildings were mostly concentrated in lower Manhattan and along Broadway from Union to Madison Squares. Subsequently they were constructed northward toward 42nd Street. The graphs also show that taller apartment buildings began to be constructed in the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side during the second decade of the 20th century. After World War II we see a “filling in” of much of Midtown and the Upper East Side. From the mid-1930s to 1970s, we can see many large housing projects built mostly on the outer parts of the island. Source: NYC PLUTO Shapefile.