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Ranked: America’s 20 Tallest Buildings
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Key Takeaways
- New York and Chicago are home to the 14 tallest buildings in the U.S.
- One World Trade Center has topped the U.S. skyline since 2014.
- A new skyscraper opened in 2025 now ranks among the top 10.
The United States is home to some of the tallest buildings in the world, with a majority of them concentrated in just two cities: New York and Chicago.
This infographic ranks the 20 tallest buildings in the U.S. based off data from the Council on Vertical Urbanism (formerly known Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat).
Detachable equipment like antennae and flagpoles are excluded from building height, although fixed rooftop spires are not.
The Dominance of New York and Chicago
The race for America’s tallest buildings is overwhelmingly concentrated in two cities: New York and Chicago account for 14 of the top 20 entries in the ranking. That dominance reflects more than a century of skyscraper construction, financing, and engineering innovation centered in the two cities.
This data table ranks the 20 tallest U.S. buildings as of April 2026:
| Rank | Name | City | Height | Completion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One World Trade Center | New York | 1,776 ft | 2014 |
| 2 | Central Park Tower | New York | 1,550 ft | 2020 |
| 3 | Willis Tower | Chicago | 1,451 ft | 1974 |
| 4 | 111 West 57th Street | New York | 1,428 ft | 2021 |
| 5 | One Vanderbilt Avenue | New York | 1,401 ft | 2020 |
| 6 | 432 Park Avenue | New York | 1,397 ft | 2015 |
| 7 | Trump International Hotel & Tower | Chicago | 1,389 ft | 2009 |
| 8 | JPMorgan Chase World Headquarters | New York | 1,388 ft | 2025 |
| 9 | 30 Hudson Yards | New York | 1,270 ft | 2019 |
| 10 | Empire State Building | New York | 1,250 ft | 1931 |
| 11 | Bank of America Tower | New York | 1,200 ft | 2009 |
| 12 | The St. Regis Chicago | Chicago | 1,191 ft | 2020 |
| 13 | Aon Center | Chicago | 1,136 ft | 1973 |
| 14 | 875 North Michigan Avenue | Chicago | 1,128 ft | 1969 |
| 15 | Comcast Technology Center | Philadelphia | 1,112 ft | 2018 |
| 16 | Wilshire Grand Center | Los Angeles | 1,100 ft | 2017 |
| 17 | 3 World Trade Center | New York | 1,079 ft | 2018 |
| 18 | Salesforce Tower | San Francisco | 1,070 ft | 2018 |
| 19 | 53 West 53 | New York | 1,050 ft | 2019 |
| 20 | Chrysler Building | New York | 1,046 ft | 1930 |
Chicago helped pioneer the skyscraper era, but New York eventually pulled ahead in both scale and concentration of supertall development.
Today, the country’s two tallest buildings, One World Trade Center (1,776 feet) and Central Park Tower (1,550 feet), are both in New York, underscoring how much the center of gravity has shifted toward Manhattan.
A Timeline of America’s Tallest Building
When it opened in 1930, the Chrysler Building (1,046 feet) was the tallest building in the world. It only held this title for 11 months before it was surpassed by a fellow Art Deco masterpiece, the Empire State Building (1,250 feet), in 1931. The Empire State Building would remain the world’s tallest building for nearly 40 years until the topping out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1970.
Chicago’s Sears Tower (1,451 feet) then took up the mantle beginning in 1974, holding the title as world’s tallest building until it was surpassed in the late 1990s by the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Sears Tower, which was eventually formally renamed the Willis Tower in 2009, remained America’s tallest building until the opening of One World Trade Center in 2014.
One World Trade Center remains the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the skyline is still evolving—New York’s JPMorgan Chase World Headquarters (1,388 ft), completed in 2025, has already climbed into the top 10 tallest buildings in the U.S.
Beyond the Two Great Skyscraper Cities
Outside New York and Chicago, only three buildings make the top 20: Philadelphia’s Comcast Technology Center, Los Angeles’ Wilshire Grand Center, and San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower.
That gap shows how exceptional the New York and Chicago skylines remain. Even relatively new towers on the West Coast are shorter than some older Midwest and East Coast peers—for example, San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower, completed in 2018, is still shorter than Chicago’s Aon Center, which opened in 1973.
Learn More on the Voronoi App
If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The World’s Tallest Buildings in 2024 on Voronoi.