The 10 Tallest Buildings In The United States

America stacks its record-breakers in two cities and pretty much nowhere else. Every one of the ten tallest buildings in the United States stands in either New York or Chicago, and eight of the ten are in New York alone. It is less a national ranking than a Manhattan house list with a couple of Chicago guests. One quirk is worth knowing before the arguments start: this ranking uses architectural height, which counts decorative spires but ignores antennas. That is why One World Trade Center sits at number one even though four buildings behind it have higher floors you can actually stand on. The lineup also just shifted. A brand-new tower muscled its way in during 2025 and knocked a longtime member off the list entirely.

1. One World Trade Center, New York

One World Trade Center rises 1,776 feet over Lower Manhattan, and the number is deliberate: it marks the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. It has been the tallest building in the country since its spire went up in 2013, and it remains the tallest in the entire Western Hemisphere. Built as the centerpiece of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex on the site of the September 11 attacks, it was designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Its 104 stories are given over almost entirely to offices, with an observation deck near the top for everyone else.

2. Central Park Tower, New York

Central Park Tower is the tallest residential building on Earth, which is a polite way of saying it is a very tall stack of very expensive apartments. It reaches 1,550 feet on 57th Street's Billionaires' Row, and it does so with no spire and no antenna, all height and no cheating. Designed by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, the team behind Dubai's Burj Khalifa, it topped out in 2019 and opened in 2021. Its roof sits higher than the roof of any other building in the Western Hemisphere, One World Trade Center included, which keeps the overall crown only thanks to that symbolic spire.

3. Willis Tower, Chicago

For a while, Willis Tower was the biggest thing going anywhere. Completed in 1974 as the Sears Tower, it stood as the tallest building in the world until Malaysia's Petronas Towers passed it in 1998, and it held the American title for roughly four decades, until One World Trade Center overtook it. It still owns the Chicago skyline at 1,451 feet. The draw for visitors is the Skydeck on the 103rd floor, where glass boxes called the Ledge jut out over the street and let you look straight down through the floor beneath your shoes. On a clear day you can see four states from up there: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

4. 111 West 57th Street, New York

111 West 57th Street holds a stranger record: it is the skinniest skyscraper in the world. The tower is only about 60 feet wide at the base and climbs to 1,428 feet, a height-to-width ratio of 24 to 1 that makes it look less like a building than a bookmark left standing in Midtown. Also called the Steinway Tower, after the piano showroom at its foot, it was designed by SHoP Architects and finished in 2021. A few dozen apartments occupy the sliver of floor space inside, and the views come standard with the vertigo.

5. One Vanderbilt, New York

One Vanderbilt is the newest way to look at Grand Central Terminal, since it went up right next door. Opened in 2020 at 1,401 feet, it is mostly an office tower, the second-largest office building in Manhattan, but the part the public cares about is SUMMIT, the mirror-lined observation experience that opened near the top in 2021. It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and built by SL Green, and it stands this tall because the city rezoned the blocks around Grand Central under Mayor Bill de Blasio specifically to allow it.

6. 432 Park Avenue, New York

432 Park Avenue looks like a ruler stood on end, and by legend that is roughly the idea. Architect Rafael Vinoly is said to have based its grid of square windows on the shape of a trash can he admired, which is either a great origin story or a warning about how much money changes hands on Billionaires' Row. The 1,396-foot tower opened in 2015 with 85 floors of condominiums and promptly drew complaints about swaying, creaking, and leaks near the top. It is still one of the tallest residential buildings in the world, trash-can windows and all.

7. Trump International Hotel & Tower, Chicago

When this Chicago tower was announced in 2001, the plan was to build the tallest building in the world. Then September 11 happened, the design was scaled back for safety, and it finished at 1,388 feet including its spire. That was still enough to make it the second-tallest building in the United States when it opened in 2009. It was designed by Adrian Smith at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who around the same time was drawing up an even taller project in Dubai. That one became the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, which makes these two towers something like siblings.

8. 270 Park Avenue, New York

Here is the newcomer that rewrote the list. 270 Park Avenue, the new global headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, opened in October 2025 at 1,388 feet, tying the Trump tower in Chicago and landing straight in the top ten. It is a Foster + Partners design and the largest all-electric skyscraper in North America, running on hydroelectric power with net-zero operating emissions. To build it, JPMorgan tore down the 52-story tower already on the site, the old Union Carbide Building, which in the process became the tallest building ever intentionally demolished. In short, the bank knocked down one skyscraper just to put up a taller one.

9. 30 Hudson Yards, New York

30 Hudson Yards is the tall one in the cluster of towers that turned Manhattan's far West Side into a neighborhood. At 1,270 feet it anchors the Hudson Yards development, and it was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. Its headline feature hangs off the side near the top: the Edge, a cantilevered platform that juts out into open air as the highest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere. There is a glass floor too, in case gazing at the horizon was not quite enough and you also needed to see straight down.

10. Empire State Building, New York

The Empire State Building is the elder statesman of the group, and it still knows how to work a skyline. Finished in 1931, it reigned as the tallest building in the world for about four decades, until the original World Trade Center rose in the early 1970s. At 1,250 feet it is outmeasured on paper by everything above it here, and it does not seem to mind, because it is the one tourists actually picture. Millions ride up to the 86th-floor observatory every year, and the building is famous enough to have its own ZIP code. A deep energy retrofit around 2010 earned the tower a LEED Gold rating, which is not bad for a structure older than most of its neighbors' grandparents.

The List Never Stops Moving

For years this ranking ended with the Bank of America Tower, a genuinely green skyscraper near Bryant Park that was the first in the world to earn a top-tier LEED Platinum rating. In 2025 it slipped to eleventh when 270 Park Avenue opened, which is a very on-brand way for one bank's headquarters to elbow another off a leaderboard. That is the nature of tall buildings: the list is never finished. New York and Chicago have traded the crown for more than a century, people have argued about spires for almost as long, and somewhere right now a developer is sketching the tower that bumps the Empire State Building down to eleventh. Until it opens, these ten hold the podium.