Tourists who want to soak in New York’s famous skyline from one of the city’s many observation decks will soon have one more to choose from: The crown of the 1,401-foot-tall One Vanderbilt tower in midtown Manhattan.

Opening Oct. 21, the four-level Summit observatory, spanning 65,000 square feet, includes an all-glass, enclosed elevator called Ascent that travels up the outside of the building to a view 1,210 feet above the city. Ticket sales began Tuesday. It will be the latest sky-high vantage point to open in the city, ratcheting up the competition for sightseeing dollars that’s seen similar projects open in some of the tallest buildings across the country.

Summit features an attraction called Levitation with fully transparent glass boxes that jut from the building and suspend 1,063 feet above Madison Avenue. The observatory will have a cafe, bar and food kiosks from restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events. Developer SL Green Realty said the outdoor area has the world's highest urban outdoor alpine meadow.

The attraction is the latest addition to the lineup of New York observatories, from the deck at the iconic Empire State Building, the oldest in the city opening in 1931, to the Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, which opened in 1933. One World Trade Center, the Western Hemisphere's tallest building, debuted in 2014 with its observatory deck — the highest overall vantage point in New York — opening the following year. The West Side’s Hudson Yards, the largest private U.S. real estate development, has a deck called Edge that offers visitors a look down 100 stories through a clear glass floor.

Observation decks are popular with tourists, which New York City is trying to draw more of after it was hit hard by the pandemic. But the attractions aren't exclusive to New York, with the next two largest U.S. cities, Los Angeles and Chicago, also featuring similar sightseeing.

Top of the Rock owner Tishman Speyer is presenting to the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday “enhancements” to its Top of the Rock experience that it said will harken back to the history of the observation deck. One of the proposals includes “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” based on the iconic 1932 photo of 11 ironworkers eating lunch on a steel beam while 30 Rockefeller Plaza — then called the RCA Building — was under construction.

Visitors would be seated in a rotating beam-like structure, securely strapped in, and raised above the 69th floor to visually recreate the iconic photo, according to Tishman Speyer. The real estate company also is proposing adding a kinetic globe called the Beacon that can provide audio programming for guests.

“We are doubling down on Rockefeller Center as a beacon of New York’s bright future,” a company spokesperson told CoStar News in an email. “As we reimagine the Top of the Rock experience, our aim is to restore the original historical intent of the observation deck.”

The Landmark Preservation Commisson in May also approved a plan for a new observation deck at the Chrysler Building.

But to the artist known as Kenzo, who helped create what’s billed as One Vanderbilt’s “immersive experience,” what will set the city’s newest observatory apart is its connection to the public via access directly through Grand Central Terminal.

“Observation decks are typically aimed at tourists,” said Kenzo, who prefers to be referenced by his first name, in an interview on a preview tour of Summit, where mirrors on three sides spanning two levels create a kaleidoscope of images against the sweeping views of the skyline outside.

“The intention for [Summit] is vastly different from other observation decks,” Kenzo told CoStar News. “It’s for tourists as well. But this is just as much for New Yorkers. … It’s a primal sensual experience that can only happen in New York and from this vantage point at this elevation. … Right now we are still in the dead center of the city, but we are so high above it and in this kind of magical space that it’s essentially kind of like as if the city is a living organism. ... You can find a place to be and contemplate and find joy.”

Describing himself as a “die-hard New Yorker,” Kenzo said his design is a “love letter” to the city. “I believe very deeply in the importance of New York in a global context. New York is very much the cultural heartbeat of the world,” he said.

Summit’s opening is coming at a time when New York’s tourism industry is seeking to recover from coronavirus-wrought damages that in recent months have seen some recovery underway with increased vaccinations. Still, international travel restrictions have hurt observatory visits at towers such as the Empire State Building, and concerns over the COVID-19 delta variant linger.

The attraction at One Vanderbilt also adds to the crop of New York observatory offerings paying tribute to an old New York tradition.

“When the original skyscrapers were built in New York, they almost always had an observation deck,” Michelle Young, assistant professor of architecture at Columbia University and founder of the city guide website Untapped New York, told CoStar, adding most have been closed except the famous tourist sites at Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. “It’s very cool to see new buildings take that tradition. … What’s new versus before the art deco observation decks is the addition of the experiential nature. In the ’20s and ’30s, you would pretty much just see the view.”

Completed in 1930, the 1,046-foot-tall Chrysler Building was formerly home to the Cloud Club lunch room and Celestial observation deck, according to the website of building owner RFR.

Young, who has visited other observatory decks in the city, said Summit’s use of the mirrors is “unique.”

“The multilevel experience in which every room is curated is different from what I’ve seen,” she said after the preview tour. SL Green is “trying to take you on a journey through different spaces.”

Summit’s opening may put the most pressure on midtown’s Empire State Building, which is less than a mile away and recently completed a $165 million redevelopment of its observatory. Before the pandemic, the tower, offering views from both the 86th and 102nd floors, hosted 3.5 million visitors in 2019, with the observatory business alone representing about one-third of landlord Empire State Realty’s total revenue that year. The company had already referenced in its 2019 annual report the openings of both Summit and Edge as potentially having a “negative impact” on its own observatory revenue.

While New York City has a variety of options, sky-high attractions can be found across the United States. Decks offering expansive views and thrill rides are well known in Chicago, where they can be found on the city's No. 1 and No. 5 tallest towers, the 1,451-foot Willis Tower and the 1,128-foot 875 North Michigan Avenue.

Plans to build a third observatory atop the city's fourth-tallest tower, the Aon Center, have been delayed by the COVID-19 health crisis. The owner of the 83-story office tower, New York-based 601W Cos., in early 2019 secured zoning approval to construct a glass elevator along the exterior of the northwest side of the Aon Center, leading up to an observatory overlooking Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. Construction was set to begin last year, but 601W has pushed back its schedule twice during the pandemic. It is now expected to go under construction sometime in 2022.

The $185 million plan includes creating a tourist attraction with food, drinks and experiences, such as the Sky Summit. Enclosed cabs are expected to lift guests over the side of the 1,136-foot-tall tower for 30 to 40 seconds.

When built, that ride will compete with two other skyscrapers that opened in the 1970s — the 110-story Willis Tower, the office building formerly known as Sears Tower, and the 100-story 875 North Michigan Avenue, the office and residential building formerly known as the John Hancock Center — for tourism dollars.

Willis Tower’s observatory is called Skydeck Chicago, offering the highest views in the United States. Its main attraction is The Ledge, with glass boxes that protrude out from the building, allowing for views 1,353 feet straight down.

The observatory at 875 North Michigan Avenue is called 360 Chicago and offers The Tilt. As many as eight visitors stand in a glass compartment that tips downward, creating views of the Magnificent Mile shopping avenue from 1,030 feet above.

Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, meanwhile, is losing an observation attraction just five years after its debut.

The Los Angeles Times in May reported the owner of the 73-story U.S. Bank Tower will permanently shut the Skyspace observatory, which has been closed to the public since just before the pandemic, as it renovates the building that is largely office focused. Just five years ago, then-owner OUE Limited of Singapore opened the observatory with a hair-raising attraction called Skyslide. It was a glass-enclosed chute along the exterior of Los Angeles’ second-tallest building.

New York-based Silverstein Properties, which bought the tower for $430 million last year, plans to convert the floors that had been accessible to the public back to offices.