By: Ilana Siyance

Living in the penthouse historically had a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’. It was partly the feeling of being higher at the top than anyone else, attaining what few could reach. The views were also the best, so the apartments were usually built larger and more luxuriously for an escalated price tag.

Now, however, as residential towers in the Big Apple are getting taller and taller, it seems the adoration for penthouses is dwindling. “A lot of my clients find new penthouses to be too high,” said Herbert Chou of Christie’s International Real Estate. “The perspective is actually a little better in the 28th-to-40th-floor range, depending on the neighborhood. From a penthouse, you are looking down. You are so far up that you are detached from your surroundings.”

As evidence of the new partiality to mid-level apartments, take a look at the most expensive home ever purchased in America. Ken Griffin, CEO of the global investment firm Citadel, paid $238 million in January for a multi-floor 23,090-square-foot loft at 220 Central Park South. In making his record purchase and with an estimated net worth of 13 billion, clearly price was not a factor. Griffin did not, however, choose a penthouse. Instead, he opted for a pad on the 50th to 53rd floors of the 65-story tower. “He wanted to feel more in touch with the city,” the broker disclosed. “It’s because he had lived at the top of 820 Fifth Avenue. Nothing on Fifth Avenue is that tall and he was used to [his old] view.” Similarly, superstar couple Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez opted to purchase on the 36th floor of the 96-story tower at 432 Park Avenue in 2018, snubbing the “penthouse collection” of high-floor apartments. (They have since sold the pad for $17.5 million.)

The anti-penthouse preference is actually the new trend. As reported by the NY Post, a classic penthouse on Fifth or Park Avenue tops out at around 250 to 400 feet high. The new residential skyscrapers far surpass those heights. For example, the 82-story Steinway Tower at 111 West 57th is a whopping 1,428 feet tall; the 75-story super-tall residential at One57 is 1,004 feet tall; and the Jenga building at 56 Leonard is 821 feet up in the sky.

The view on the very top of these oversized new skyscrapers is said to be more aloof, sometimes with the unwelcomed addition even of the queasy feeling of being so high up in the sky. The view is arguably too far up, making everything below look illusory. “They actually want to relate to what’s outside their windows: the trees, charming townhouses and people walking by,” explains Compass real estate agent Vickey Barron.

Further, from the tippy top the tops of these towers, the view is actually too clouded by the elements. As per the National Climatic Data Center, the park is under at least 80 percent cloud coverage for about four months out of the year. The wind at the top is also a nuisance, for people who like to make use of a balcony or window. “If you are too high up, it doesn’t matter if the unit has a terrace, because it’s too windy to use,” said Barron, using the examples of Tribeca’s 56 Leonard and Flatiron’s One Madison, which are 57 and 50 stories high respectively. “You’ll get blown away.”