Modern City · event 3 of 15

1916

The zoning law that shaped the skyline. After the Equitable Building rises forty storeys straight from the pavement and puts seven acres into shadow, the city passes the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the United States. It requires buildings to step back as they rise, producing the wedge-shaped silhouette of every tower built over the next forty-five years.

The Modern City era

  1. 27 October 1904
  2. 25 March 1911
  3. 1916
  4. 1920
  5. 23 October 1929
  6. 1 May 1931
  7. 1934
  8. 28 June 1969
  9. 1969
  10. 4 April 1973
  11. 30 October 1975
  12. 11 September 2001
  13. 29 October 2012
  14. 1 January 2017
  15. 1 March 2020

See the full timeline or read the history of New York.