There’s a parlor game that sophisticated New Yorkers have been playing since the Gilded Age: What are New York’s best apartment buildings? Before the turn of the (last) century, the Dakota and the Osborne were obvious answers; by the 1920s the list had grown to include McKim, Mead & White’s 998 Fifth, and the ultra-soigné 820 Fifth Avenue. The Roaring Twenties witnessed the construction of some of the most luxurious apartment buildings ever designed: 740 Park Avenue, the Art Deco–inspired River House, and Rosario Candela’s extraordinary 778 and 720 Park Avenue. Now, nearly 130 years after the Dakota’s cornerstone was laid, the New York skyline features numerous new palatial residential buildings, including Robert A. M. Stern’s 15 Central Park West, Richard Meier’s glass-walled Perry Street towers, and 432 Park Avenue, New York’s tallest residential building.

Kirk Henckels and Anne Walker, real estate and architectural insiders, chronicle the fortunes and features of fifteen outstanding apartment houses, bringing them to life with evocative vintage photos of exterior and interior architectural details, as well photographs of chic New Yorkers at home in their elegant abodes by the likes of Beaton, Horst, and Aarons. Accompanied by Michel Arnaud’s expressive photographs and newly commissioned architectural plans, Henckels and Walker tour some of the most beautiful apartments in these buildings as they look today, designed by the talented hands of Robert Couturier, Michael S. Smith, Thomas Jayne, Katie Ridder, Markham Roberts, Scott Snyder, Peter Marino, and others. This is a true insider’s look at life at the top.