Why go
The city is unusually legible on foot because its history is written in building form. In Manhattan, the setback profiles of the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building show how twentieth-century rules brought light toward the street. Beyond the towers, brownstones, tenements, detached houses, and older waterfront districts reveal the city's varied growth.
The full story
New York's skyline is not one style but a record of changing land values, materials, and regulations. The 1916 Zoning Resolution encouraged buildings to step back as they rose, producing the tapered silhouettes that became closely associated with the Art Deco Chrysler Building and Empire State Building. Look for the Chrysler's ornamented crown and the Empire State's spire as examples of architecture designed to be read from the street as well as at a distance. The city becomes more varied away from the business core. Rows of brownstones and townhouses, dense tenement blocks from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and detached homes in places such as Riverdale, Ditmas Park, and Douglaston all belong to the same city. A walk that compares a tower district with a residential neighborhood gives the architecture more meaning than a skyline view alone.