Sliver building

A sliver building is a tall slender building constructed on a lot with a narrow frontage, typically 45 ft or less. Since the mid-1980s, one of the most remarkable advances in tall building design has been their construction to unprecedented slenderness ratios.

The now defunct New York City Board of Estimate banned sliver buildings from many residential zoning districts in New York City in 1983, after residents objected to their construction. The resurgence of the city's real estate market prior to the economic downturn of 2008 led to new sliver buildings being constructed in commercial districts. The city's zoning laws permit builders to purchase air rights—empty space above roofs—from adjacent commercial properties whose owners do not wish to heighten their buildings. The new buildings are sometimes cantilevered over adjacent buildings, and built higher than a typical building in the area by adding purchased air rights, sometimes from multiple nearby properties, to the new building's total height.

One Madison, a 50-story building with a 12:1 ratio, was completed in 2010 in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, followed by more than a dozen additional pencil towers completed between 2014 and 2022, the tallest of which include One57 in 2014, 432 Park Avenue in 2015, Central Park Tower, 220 Central Park South and 53W53 in 2019, and 111 West 57th Street, along with The Brooklyn Tower, both in 2022.