Six homes with oversized "great rooms" in which to gather

Once upon a time, we prepared meals in the kitchen, served them in the dining room, and then retired to the living room for some after-dinner socializing. These days, all of those activities tend to take place in one single central location, which is why homes with, over-sized, centralized, multi-use spaces are so desirable.

Here, six apartments that illustrate the concept, offering great rooms in which friends and family can eat, drink and be merry together.

The combined living and dining room of this two-bedroom, two-bath condo at 225 Fifth Avenue (listed at $3.5 million) takes up almost a third of the apartment’s total 1,600-plus square footage.

This three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath penthouse condo at 22 Mercer Street (on the market for $7.595 million) boasts a main floor great room with 11-foot-9-inch ceilings, a woodburning fireplace, an open chef’s kitchen—with Gaggenau, Miele and Sub-Zero appliances—and a dining area large enough to fit the whole family.

The centerpiece of this four-bedroom, three-bath condo loft at 132 Perry Street (for rent at $30,000/month) is the sun-filled great room, boasting five oversized casement windows, a north-facing Juliet balcony, a south-facing terrace, three exposures, a woodburning fireplace, and an open kitchen.

At 429 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, a two-bedroom, two-bath open loft (listed at $12,000/month) features a massive kitchen/living/dining area with high barrel-vaulted ceilings, exposed brick walls, oversized windows facing south and east and an open kitchen.

Two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows contribute to a feeling of vastness in the great room of this full-floor, four-bedroom, four-bath condo at 1355 First Avenue (yours for $6.995 million).