The city, drawn year by year

All five boroughs, every building - tenement to tower - from the mid-1970s fiscal-crisis low to today. Buildings load as you move: drag to rotate, scroll to zoom, pan anywhere in the city.

One caveat: the red teardowns only reach back to the late 1990s, where the city's demolition records get reliable. Before that, the early years look calmer than they were.

Built from NYC Open Data building footprints and the city's historical footprints archive (CC BY).