There are 319 skyscrapers in NYC. One of them leans 3 inches to the north.

Humans have been building upward in towers since the dawn of time, and in the last few hundred years, we’ve gotten really good at it. But every now and then, even with the marvels of modern engineering, we get it wrong.

Cut short

Mired in controversy, marred by over a dozen lawsuits, and shaped more “like a banana” than a traditional apartment complex, the unfinished Seaport 1 building in Manhattan still looms large enough in the NYC mindscape to warrant a new feature piece in The New Yorker this week. 

Construction on “The Leaning Tower of New York,” which slants some three inches to the north and is pictured below, halted indefinitely almost five years ago now, as multiple litigations piled on top of the project after The Lean emerged in 2019.

In an effort to shave $6 million from their costs, the building’s developers reportedly chose a lesser-used method when it came to laying the complex’s foundations, looking away from the “pile” foundations that prop up much of Manhattan’s towering skyline.

Cityscapes

Indeed, with more than 300 buildings that are more than 150 meters tall, NYC is the skyscraper capital of the world... at least outside of China, that is.

Of the 100 cities with the most skyscrapers (buildings that stand over 150 meters or 492 feet tall) in the world, 40 are in China alone. Hong Kong is officially the skyscraper capital of the world, with 564, while Shenzhen stands as the world’s second tallest city, with 440 buildings over 150 meters. New York comes in a distant third place, with 319 in total, including 17 structures above 300 meters (984 ft). 

Interestingly, according to the figures from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, there have been 91 skyscrapers built in Shenzhen since we covered the topic in 2022. Back then, the Big Apple only had 302 skyscrapers.