Others, however, just take the elevator.
“We love the serenity,” said Karen Wilson, who, with her husband, Doug, recently bought a 22nd-floor Manhattan pied-à-terre at the Visionaire, a building under construction in Battery Park City. “My husband and I like the busyness of the street, but we also like to escape and see that busyness from a distance,” she said.
The Wilsons, whose primary home is in Laguna Beach, Calif., are among those second-home owners who crave city views rather than country vistas and have chosen homes in high-rises to realize their dreams. And real estate agents say such high-rise pieds-à-terre are a growing part of the residential market in many cities.
“It’s the majority of my business,” said Gingi Beltran, a saleswoman with Related Cervera Realty Services in Miami. “I have clients who are married to being on high floors. They believe the higher the floor, the more magical the view.”
Gabriel Bedoya, vice president of the Corcoran Group in New York, said, “I sell a lot of pieds-à-terre to people who specifically request very high floors. There’s a certain cachet to an apartment with a great view, and that almost always means an apartment high up in a building.”
One such buyer is Dr. John Leonard, who recently bought a two-bedroom second home on the 22nd floor of 840 Lake Shore Drive, a new condominium in downtown Chicago.
“I love the mornings when the sun comes popping up over the lake all pink and orange,” said Dr. Leonard, a pharamceutical executive whose primary home is in Chicago’s northern suburbs. “No matter what, it makes me feel that this is going to be a good day until proven otherwise.”
Other buyers can sound almost mystical when they describe the attractions of a lofty apartment.
“Being up high gives you a breadth, an expanse and a feeling that you just don’t get on a lower floor,” said Betty Saks, who, with her husband, Bart Kavanaugh, recently purchased a 5,100-square-foot condominium on the 27th floor of the Canyon Ranch Living building soon to be completed in Miami Beach, Fla.
They seem to have a certain affinity for great heights: their primary residence is a condominium on the 74th floor of the Time Warner Center in New York. Ms. Saks said the view has a calming effect.
“There’s a peacefulness that comes with being up high,” she said. “You feel like you’re away from everything.”
Jim Sexton, whose primary home is in a golf course community north of San Francisco, agrees. He and his wife, Monica, recently purchased a second home on the 19th floor of the Bath Club in Miami Beach.
“It’s a great escape,” he said. “Last night, we were out on the deck, looking at the lights along the Intracoastal Waterway, the Miami skyline, the pink and turquoise neon lights everywhere. And I thought: does it get any better than this?”
Dr. Leonard makes the point that a high perch is the best place to observe urban activity. “The city has so much going on,” he said. “It’s nice to look down on it or into it as opposed to up at it, where you lose a lot of the drama.”
There’s also a sense of safety that comes from being distant from the street.
“I love pulling up to the building at the end of the day,” Dr. Leonard said. “You press the transponder, the garage door opens and you’re back in the cocoon.”
DEVELOPERS, of course, have long been aware of the value of a great view, which is why the upper floors of most condominium buildings are reserved for larger, more expensive apartments. And because pieds-à-terre are luxuries, many buyers are drawn to these units.
“I think people are willing to splurge a little bit,” said Thomas O. Weeks, chief executive officer of Related Midwest, a developer in Chicago. “If you’re going to have a place in town, it’s not a budgetary issue. It’s about luxury and convenience. And when people make the decision to buy a pied-à-terre, they want to make sure the unit is going to give them what they want, which is to have an exciting — but also a relaxing and luxurious — experience in the city.”
There is also no denying the status factor.
“In many of these high-rise buildings,” Mr. Bedoya said, “there are fewer apartments the higher up you go, so it feels a bit more private and exclusive. And the views are certainly something that people value. When you’re entertaining, everyone is always impressed by a lot of lights.”
Prices vary from city to city, but the general rule is that the higher the unit, the more it will cost. In Miami, for instance, “We usually go up between $30,000 and $50,000 per floor,” Ms. Beltran said.
An upper-floor unit also can create some unique decorating challenges, particularly in modern buildings with floor-to-ceiling windows. Leslie Jones, the owner of Leslie Jones & Associates, an interior design firm in Chicago, said, “A west or a south view can be really hard, especially when you’re doing something like a media room, where you want a fairly low light level for most of the time.”
A characteristic of all urban second homes, high or low, is that they give owners an excuse to cut loose or at least have a little fun when it comes to designing and furnishing them.
Mr. Sexton, for example, saw it as a chance to indulge a fantasy of his earlier years — in this case, an obsession with the 1980s television show “Miami Vice.”
“When I was younger, I would be glued to that show every Friday night,” he said. “I always wanted to live like that. When we came here, I told the designer I wanted a “Miami Vice”-meets-New York look. It’s pretty amazing. We’ve got purple walls that go into yellow walls and turquoise walls that go into silver walls.”
He describes the final effect as being a blend of Art Deco and the W Hotel.
Dr. Leonard had a more down to earth request for his Chicago getaway. “I wanted to have rooms, compartments,” he said. “I’ve always lived in the suburbs in houses with what they call great rooms — these huge spaces that are like airplane hangars. I wanted a dining room. I wanted a living room. I didn’t want them to be the same room.”
Light, and views, also affect how people live in their units. Dr. Leonard’s building, for example, has a large corner turret. In the developer’s original layout, the circular space, which provides views of Lake Michigan as well as downtown Chicago — is used as a dining room. Dr. Leonard, however, changed it into a family room.
“The lake is only interesting during the day,” he said. “At night, it’s a black void and not that exciting. So I thought, why not turn that space into a day room or family room? That way, I’ll use it when I can actually see the water.”
WEATHER takes on a more personal aspect the higher up one goes. In Chicago, for instance, it’s not unusual during certain times of the year for the upper stories of high-rises to be shrouded in clouds for all or part of a day.
“I woke up one morning and it was like the city had disappeared,” said George Mayorga, who recently purchased a studio on the 54th floor of 474 North Lake Shore Drive, a new condominium building near the Loop. Mr. Mayorga’s primary home is in San Francisco.
Pieds-à-terre also tend to reverse the traditional hierarchy in terms of the importance of various rooms. Whereas kitchens grow ever larger in most houses, in pieds-à-terre they are, if not afterthoughts, distinctly secondary.
“We do coffee and maybe breakfast and that’s about it,” said Elizabeth Walter, who with her husband, Sean, recently bought a pied-a-terre on the 22nd floor of the Downtown Club, in the former Downtown Athletic Club building in Lower Manhattan.
While many couples view high-rise second homes as escapes from the responsibilities of family life, others regard them as extensions of it. The Walters, for example, whose primary residence is in Monroe Township, N.J., frequently bring their two children in for urban weekends.
“We go to Yankee games, we do Central Park, the museum and ESPN Zone,” Mrs. Walter said. “Sometimes, we just go in and don’t really have a lot of plans. We just kind of wing it.”
For Mrs. Walter, who grew up on Long Island, these weekends are an echo of her childhood:
“My mother was very urban — she lived in Paris before she got married — and on weekends she would take me and my brothers and sisters into the city to see everything Manhattan has to offer. I feel like I’m following in her footsteps.”