Historic Building Footprints of New York City

Historical footprint outlines of buildings in New York City, provided by data.cityofnewyork.us. The dataset includes attributes such as construction year, demolition year, height, and lot identifiers. It was last updated on March 29, 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze urban development patterns over time using CONSTRUCTION YEAR and DEMOLITION YEAR fields.
• Calculate aggregate building area changes across neighborhoods using SHAPE_AREA and FEATURE CODE.
• Model building height distribution and its correlation with lot size using HEIGHT ROOF and BASE_BBL.
• Join with property tax datasets using MAP PLUTO BBL or BASE_BBL for historical land value analysis.
• Track data provenance and update cycles for historical records using LAST_EDITED_DATE and GEOM SOURCE.

Strengths

• Includes 17 distinct columns covering building identifiers, geometry, and temporal attributes.
• Contains specific temporal data fields CONSTRUCTION YEAR and DEMOLITION YEAR for historical analysis.
• Provides multiple geometry and area metrics (Shape__Length, SHAPE_AREA, the_geom) for spatial calculations.
• Offers multiple join keys (BIN, BASE_BBL, MAP PLUTO BBL) for integration with other NYC datasets.

Limitations

• Sample data and total row count are unavailable, preventing assessment of dataset scale and completeness.
• Unknown license restricts clarity on permissible use cases and redistribution rights.
• Data freshness is uncertain beyond the last update date, as update frequency is not specified.

Provenance

Source

data.cityofnewyork.us

Freshness

Last updated on March 29, 2026.

Geography

New York City