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Top 10 NYC Buildings With an Empire State Building View

The real sightline from Madison Green to the Empire State Building, showing the actual obstructing buildings along Fifth Avenue
The real sightline from Madison Green to the Empire State Building, showing the actual obstructing buildings along Fifth Avenue

There's a particular kind of NYC magic in catching the Empire State Building lit up at night from your own living room. It's the skyline's most recognizable silhouette, and buildings that frame it well tend to hold their value and their appeal — for buyers, renters, and the agents who sell them.

Haystock runs a proprietary line-of-sight engine — the same ray-casting technology behind our building view and sunlight tools — that calculates, floor by floor and exposure by exposure, whether a given landmark is actually visible from a condo, co-op, or rental building anywhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Every stat below comes straight from that engine, no outside sources.

This time around, every building on our shortlist happens to pick up the Empire State Building starting right on the 1st floor — so instead of ranking by floor, we ranked by something more telling: how much of the building you actually see from that first-visible floor. Haystock's engine doesn't just flag "visible" or "blocked" — it computes a precise visibility percentage, the share of the Empire State Building's face that clears the surrounding skyline from a given window. That ranges across this list from just under 5% (a sliver, above the rooflines around it) up to nearly 60% (most of the tower, clean).

Want to check a specific address, or find ESB (or Chrysler, Freedom Tower, or Statue of Liberty) views near a listing you're working? Look it up on Haystock.

Where NYC sees the Empire State Building — all 10 buildings ray-cast to the ESB, with visibility % from the first qualifying floor
Where NYC sees the Empire State Building — all 10 buildings ray-cast to the ESB, with visibility % from the first qualifying floor

1. Madison Green — 5 East 22nd Street, Flatiron

The clearest view on this list: north-facing units at Madison Green see 59.4% of the Empire State Building from the very first floor — and that number climbs to a full 100% visible by the building's top floor, the only building in this roundup where the tower eventually clears completely. Haystock also flags this view as low future development risk, the only "low" rating in this list.

A closer look at why the view caps at 59.4%, shown in the sightline diagram above: Haystock's ray-casting engine tracks 15 real buildings along the path from Madison Green's north exposure to the Empire State Building, 861 meters away. Of the six closest to the direct sightline, 6 West 32nd Street is the tallest at 215 ft — but it's 225 Fifth Avenue, much closer to Madison Green and sitting squarely in the ray's path, that Haystock's engine flags as the most limiting obstruction for this exposure.

2. Manhattan Place — 630 First Avenue, Murray Hill

The largest building on this list, at 474 units — and the most luxurious, with Haystock's highest luxury score (64) of any building here. West-facing units see 55.5% of the Empire State Building from floor 1, and the same exposure also carries a view of the Freedom Tower.

3. The Waverly — 136 Waverly Place, Greenwich Village

A prewar co-op (built 1929, the third-oldest building on this list) where east-facing units pick up 38.4% of the Empire State Building from the ground floor, alongside a Chrysler Building view on the same exposure.

4. The Cezanne — 61 Jane Street, West Village

The only building on this list with a confirmed river view on its ESB-facing exposure — north-facing units see both the water and 30.8% of the Empire State Building, plus a partial Chrysler Building view, all from floor 1.

5. 1280 Fifth Avenue — East Harlem

The newest building on this list, built in 2010 — west-facing units see 24.7% of the Empire State Building from floor 1.

6. 1150 Fifth Avenue — Carnegie Hill

The oldest building on this list (built 1924), a prewar co-op where west-facing apartments see 20.5% of the Empire State Building starting on the ground floor.

7. 111 Central Park North — South Harlem

South-facing units here see 12.2% of the Empire State Building from floor 1, plus a partial Chrysler Building view on the same exposure. South Harlem's average Haystock view score across all buildings is 20.0 — solidly mid-pack among the ten neighborhoods in this roundup.

8. Charlton House — 2 Charlton Street, Hudson Square

A smaller ESB sliver (9.4% visible from floor 1, east exposure) — but this neighborhood posts the highest average view score of any in this list across all landmarks (23.2), so it's a strong pick for landmark views generally, not just this one.

9. 300 West 23rd Street — Chelsea

The most affordable building on this list by a wide margin — trailing-12-month closed sales averaging $687/sqft, under a third of the priciest building on this list (The Stanhope, at $2,613/sqft) — with east-facing units picking up 7.6% of the Empire State Building from floor 1.

10. The Stanhope — 995 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side

The smallest building on this list (26 units) and the thinnest slice of the view — west-facing units see just 4.8% of the Empire State Building from floor 1, though Haystock's ray-casting shows that climbing to roughly 16% by the building's top floor.

The takeaway

Ten buildings, ten different neighborhoods, and every one of them picks up the Empire State Building right from the ground floor — but "visible" and "worth seeing" aren't the same thing. The share of the tower you actually see swings more than 12x across this list, from a 4.8% sliver at The Stanhope up to 59.4% at Madison Green (and a full 100% from its own top floor). Price doesn't track cleanly with view quality either: The Stanhope commands the highest $/sqft on this list at a comparatively thin 4.8% visibility, while 300 West 23rd Street is the most affordable building here despite a real, if narrower, sightline. If you're weighing a listing on its landmark view, the percentage — not just a "yes/no visible" flag — is worth checking floor by floor.

All figures in this article — visibility percentages, floor data, luxury scores, pricing, and neighborhood stats — are pulled directly from Haystock's building and neighborhood data. To check a specific unit, run comps, or search for buildings with a landmark view near a listing you're working, use the Haystock tool.

Data sourced from Haystock (haystock.com) as of July 2026.