To borrow (and alter) a phrase from her greatest poet, America contains multitudes — and so does real estate.

Given that this is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the folks at Commercial Observer have been in a patriotic frame of mind. And one of the things we appreciate about our country is its disparate, crazy quilt nature. We would never say America is any one thing. The Great Plains is different from New York City, which is different from West Palm Beach, Fla. But all three share a distinct membership: American.

And, as we were compiling this year’s Power 100, one of the things we noted was that commercial real estate wasn’t exactly one thing, either. The story of real estate over the last year has been its own crazy quilt.

One big strand of the story has been the surge in artificial intelligence, and the incumbent data centers, power sources and office space necessary to cater to it.

No. 1 on this year’s list, Nadeem Meghji of Blackstone, put a pretty sizable bet on data centers when he purchased QTS Realty Trust — the world’s fastest-growing data center platform — for $10 billion. That would be a bold enough move to earn a top place on any real estate list, but when you consider how vast a platform Blackstone has built, and how much largesse they’ve spread ($24 billion of equity capital last year), it explains a little why we regarded them so highly.

Another strand of the story has been the resurgence of New York City’s once moribund office stock.

When J.P. Morgan Chase (see No. 3, Jamie Dimon) opened its spanking new, Gensler-designed office (see No. 98) that had been developed by Tishman Speyer (No. 2), one can see the hunger for the asset class.

Indeed, earlier this year Silverstein Properties announced a long-eluded deal: American Express would be the 2 million-square-foot anchor tenant of the developer’s yet-to-be-realized 2 World Trade Center. (We ranked Silverstein No. 6.)

“How sweet that the name ‘American’ appears on the last building at the World Trade Center,” remarked CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe (No. 15). “It seems so right on so many levels.”

Then there are the big new projects that essentially forge a city or a neighborhood from scratch, like West Palm Beach (Stephen Ross and Kenneth Himmel, No. 30) and Metropolitan Park (Steve Cohen, No. 28).

There’s the affordable housing market (Rick Gropper, No. 77) and the luxury housing market (Victor Sigoura, No. 57) and the people selling and leasing it (Robert Reffkin, No. 24).

And there’s so much more. We advise you to carefully consider each of this quilt’s patches. Taken together, they add up to our assessment of commercial real estate on this significant birthday.

The Power 100 package was written by Tom Acitelli, Andrew Coen, Gregory Cornfield, Cathy Cunningham, Emily Davis, Isabelle Durso, Julia Echikson, Larry Getlen, Max Gross, Mark Hallum, Orion Jones, Brian Pascus, Amanda Schiavo, Aaron Short and Patrick Sisson. Acitelli, Cunningham, Gross and Skip Card edited the package. Jeff Cuyubamba and Rohini Chatterjee designed it. Jim Sewastynowicz and Emily Assiran arranged the photography.