The Grandest 1107 Fifth Avenue Marjorie Merriweather Post allowed a developer to tear down her mansion on the condition that he replicate it atop the fourteen-story building that replaced it. The result was the largest apartment in New York history, with 54 rooms”one for storing ball gowns, another one for flowers”spread out over three floors. In 1926, she signed a lease for $6,250 a month ($75,000 in today’s dollars). Photo: J.C. Maugans
The First Markvelt Steegh (later Marketfield Street) Most Dutch settlers lived in freestanding houses, but in 1647, a resident named Michael Janszen put up an old friend who commuted down from Albany (then Beverwijck). Photo: New York Public Library
The Scariest The Old Brewery at Five Points (now Chinatown) According to legend, the basement of this notorious tenement housed 26 people”one of whom, a little girl, was stabbed to death over a penny. Photo: New York Public Library
The Gaudiest (Second Gilded Age) Trump Tower, 725 Fifth Avenue Armed with an interior-design license and her husband’s limitless resources, Ivana Trump decked out the family’s 20,000-square-foot triplex in eighties splendor: twelve-foot waterfall, onyx bathtub, gold-leaf moldings, fresco ceilings. Photo: Scott Frances/Esto
The Noisiest Beneath the Thunderbolt, Coney Island When George Moran built the coaster, in 1925, he drove steel beams through the Kensington Hotel and took the top floor for his family’s home. The apartment shook violently throughout each summer, but it stayed in the family’s possession until 1987. It was torn down in 2000. Photo: Eric Hedlund/Bettmann/Corbis
The Cheapest 831 Gerard Avenue When you factor in the free season tickets, the apartments with roof access in this eight-story brick building were the best deal in the city”that is, until 2009, when the new Yankee Stadium opened a block away. Photo: Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times/Redux
The Smallest 455 West 47th Street Eddie Rabon, a 24-year-old freelance event planner, described the appeal of his 55-square-foot, roughly $800-a-month studio as “all about location.” In a 2009 story in the Post, Rabon said his taller friends were unable to sit in his bathroom and close the door at the same time. He’s since moved into a loft in Queens. Photo: Angel Chevrestt/Splash News
The Pet-Friendliest 2430 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard A downstairs neighbor had complained of urine seeping down her window, but the 400-pound tiger and five-foot-long caiman living in this apartment weren’t found until their owner, Antoine Yates, called police in 2003 to report bites from a pit bull. Photo: NYPD/AP Photo (Tiger)
The Densest 81 Bowery, fourth floor It may not be the most tightly packed in the entire city, but it must come close: a floor of an old tenement building subdivided into 30 cubicles, each 64 square feet. Entire families have lived in a single cubicle, and the floor’s population has reached 100. Food is cooked with hot plates and camping gear. The predominant language is Fujianese. Photo: Annie Ling
The Highest 8 Spruce Street, penthouse For the past ten years, the penthouse at Trump World Tower floated higher than any other apartment in the city. That record was bested last month, when Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce Street opened its doors. Its penthouse is on the 76th story, 870 feet in the air. Photo: David Allee for New York Magazine
