Christina Roccos and her husband, Martin Smithmyer, looked “all over the city for an interesting space that was not boxy,” Ms. Roccos said, before they settled, in 2008, on a two-bedroom, two-bathroom penthouse with a landscaped terrace large enough for “three huge kiddie pools,” she said. “It was like having a backyard.” They bought it for $1.9 million.

“We knew nothing about the financial district, the quirkiness of it, at the time,” she said, referring to the neighborhood at the southern tip of Manhattan, which was then in the early stages of huge residential growth, following the exodus by financial institutions after Sept. 11, 2001. Another growth spurt followed Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“We felt like pioneers, all of us who moved here at about the same time and had children about the same age,” said Ms. Roccos, 54. She and her husband, who is 45, have a 12-year-old daughter and 5-year-old twins. After the twins were born, the couple, who own an international biotech company, rented out their first apartment and moved into a larger one nearby, which they rent.