What is the standard new york city lot size?

Answer 1

There is no standard New York City lot size. However, in much of the older parts of the city, i.e., those originally built up in the 19th, especially the later 19th century, building lots tended to have widths in the range of 15-25 feet and depths of about 100 feet (half the short dimension of a rectangular block). The average improved (built-on) lot was about 20 feet wide; unimproved lots were frequently multiples of 25 feet in width, and then subdivided by the developer. This be seen clearly in the case of Manhattan, where a 100 foot wide unimproved lot might end up as six improved lots each 16 feet 8 inches wide. Today the average building lot on the island of Manhattan is about 60 feet wide though the range of widths is even greater than it was in the 19th century. There were nominally some 141,000 25 x 100 foot lots on the island of Manhattan not long after the Civil War; the peak number actually surveyed for sale and improvement was perhaps 125,000 around 1890; the number actually built on closer 105,000 - but the statistics are complicated by the fact that even as new lots were being added to stock at the northern end of the island, older ones were being combined downtown, thus reducing the total number. Today there are some 42,600 building lots on the island of Manhattan, and some 809,000 in the city as a whole. (Note that the number of buildings lots is less than the total number of all blocks, which includes open spaces, vacant land, parking faciities, etc.)