Flatiron Building
The Flatiron Building, originally the Fuller Building, is a 22-story, steel-framed triangular building at 175 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, and sometimes called, in its early days, "Burnham's Folly", it was opened in 1902. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street—where the building's back end is located—with East 23rd Street grazing the triangle's northern peak. The name "Flatiron" derives from its triangular shape, which recalls that of a cast-iron clothes iron.
The Flatiron Building was developed as the headquarters of construction firm Fuller Company, which acquired the site from the Newhouse family in May 1901. Construction proceeded rapidly, and the building opened on October 1, 1902. Though the building was originally 20 floors, a "cowcatcher" retail space and penthouse were added shortly after the building's opening. The Fuller Company sold the building in 1925 to an investment syndicate. The Equitable Life Assurance Society took over the building after a foreclosure auction in 1933 and sold it to another syndicate in 1945. Helmsley-Spear managed the building for much of the late 20th century, renovating it several times. The Newmark Group started managing the building in 1997. Ownership was divided among several companies, which started renovating the building again in 2019. Jacob Garlick agreed to acquire the Flatiron Building at [|an auction in early 2023], but failed to pay the required deposit, and three of the four existing ownership groups took over the building. In October 2023, the building's owners announced that it would be converted to residential condominiums; the project is planned to be complete by 2026.
The Flatiron Building's facade is divided vertically into three sections, similarly to the components of a classical column. The three-story base is clad with limestone, while the upper stories are clad with glazed terracotta. The building's steel frame, designed by structural engineering firm Purdy and Henderson, was intended to withstand four times the maximum wind force of the area. Called "one of the world's most iconic skyscrapers and a quintessential symbol of New York City", the building anchors the south end of Madison Square and the north end of the Ladies' Mile Historic District. The neighborhood around it is called the Flatiron District after its signature, iconic building. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1966, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989.
Site
The Flatiron Building occupies a triangular city block bounded by Fifth Avenue to the west, Broadway to the east, and 22nd Street to the south. The western and eastern facades converge, forming a "peak" at its northern corner where Fifth Avenue and Broadway intersect with East 23rd Street. The shape of the site arises from Broadway's diagonal alignment relative to the Manhattan street grid. The site measures on Fifth Avenue, on Broadway, and on 22nd Street. Above the ground level, all three corners of the triangle are rounded. Despite the building's name, the site is shaped like a scalene right triangle, rather than an isosceles triangle.Buildings directly across the street from the Flatiron Building include the Toy Center to the north, the Sohmer Piano Building to the southwest, the Scribner Building to the south, and Madison Green to the southeast. Entrances to the New York City Subway's 23rd Street station, served by the, are adjacent to the building. The Flatiron Building is within the Ladies' Mile Historic District, a preservation which extends between 15th Street and 24th Street.
Previous structures
The St. Germain Hotel was built by 1855 on the south end of the lot. It was one of several hotels built in the neighborhood during the mid-19th century. Amos Eno purchased the entire block in 1857 for $32,000, and he shortly built the Fifth Avenue Hotel on a site diagonally across from it. At some point after 1880, Eno tore down the St. Germain Hotel and replaced it with a seven-story apartment building, the Cumberland. On the remainder of the lot, he built four three-story buildings for commercial use. This left four stories of the Cumberland's northern face exposed, which Eno rented out to advertisers, including The New York Times, which installed a sign made up of electric lights. The sign, the first of its kind in New York City, was a precursor to the Great White Way near Times Square. Eno later put a canvas screen on the wall, projecting images from a magic lantern atop one of his smaller buildings, where he alternately presented advertisements and interesting pictures. Both the Times and the New-York Tribune began using the screen for news bulletins, and on election nights tens of thousands of people would gather in Madison Square, waiting for the latest results.The site came to be known by many names, including "Eno's flatiron", "Eno's corner", and "the cow catcher". By the 1890s, the Eno family earned $42,000 a year from the site. Although Eno was one of the largest landowners in New York City by 1894, he rejected all offers to purchase the flatiron site during his lifetime. After his death in 1899, his assets were liquidated, and the lot went up for sale. The New York State Assembly appropriated $3 million for the city to buy it, but this fell through when a newspaper reporter discovered that the plan was a graft scheme by Tammany Hall boss Richard Croker. Instead, the lot was bought at auction by William Eno, one of Amos's sons, for $690,000 in April 1899. This was more than 20 times what the elder Eno had paid for the property four decades earlier.
In May 1899, just three weeks after William had acquired the flatiron lot, he resold it to Samuel and Mott Newhouse for $750,000 or around $801,000. At the time, the Newhouse family did not consider a skyscraper on the flatiron site to be feasible because of engineering and architectural constraints. The Newhouses intended to erect a 12-story building with retail shops at street level and bachelor apartments above. They announced plans for the building in November 1900, but the plans were not executed, even though the value of land lots in the city was increasing. At the time, eight- to ten-story office and commercial buildings were being developed in the neighborhood, replacing older, shorter commercial structures.
History
At the beginning of March 1901, media outlets reported that the Newhouse family was planning to sell "Eno's flatiron" for about $2 million to Cumberland Realty Company, an investment partnership created by Harry S. Black, CEO of the Fuller Company. The Fuller Company was the first true general contractor that dealt with all aspects of buildings' construction, and they specialized in erecting skyscrapers. They were particularly experienced in designing towers on small sites, such as the Trinity and United States Realty Buildings in Lower Manhattan. Black intended to construct a new headquarters building on the site, despite the recent deterioration of the surrounding neighborhood. At the end of that March, the Fuller Company organized a subsidiary to develop a building on the site. The sale was finalized in May 1901.Development
Plans and site-clearing
Black hired Daniel Burnham's architectural firm to design a 21-story building on the site in February 1901. It would be Burnham's first in New York City, the tallest building in Manhattan north of the Financial District, and the first skyscraper north of Union Square. The Northwestern Salvage and Wrecking Company began razing the site in May 1901, after the majority of existing tenants' leases had expired. Most of the Cumberland's remaining tenants readily vacated the building in exchange for monetary compensation. The sole holdout was Winfield Scott Proskey, a retired colonel who refused to move out until his lease expired later that year. Cumberland Realty unsuccessfully attempted to deactivate Proskey's water and gas supply, and Proskey continued to live in the Cumberland while contractors demolished all of the surrounding apartments. By the end of May 1901, Cumberland Realty discovered that Proskey was bankrupt, and his creditors took over the lease and razed the rest of the Cumberland that June.The New York Herald published an image of the site on June 2, 1901, with the caption "Flatiron Building". The project's structural engineer, Corydon Purdy, filed plans for a 20-story building on the site that August. The Flatiron Building was not the first building of its triangular ground-plan, although it was the largest at the time of its completion. Earlier buildings with a similar shape include one built in 1867 in Syracuse, New York; a triangular Roman temple built on a similarly constricted site in the city of Verulamium, Britannia; Bridge House, Leeds, England ; the I.O.O.F. Centennial Building in Alpena, Michigan; and the English-American Building in Atlanta. The Real Estate Record and Guide published a drawing of the building in October 1901; though the drawing was captioned "The Cumberland", it was very similar to the Flatiron Building's final design.
Construction
The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company began producing architectural terracotta pieces for the building in August 1901. Around the same time, the New York City Department of Buildings indicated that it would refuse to approve Purdy's initial plans unless the engineers submitted detailed information about the framework, fireproofing, and wind-bracing systems. Purdy complied with most of the DOB's requests, submitting detailed drawings and documents, but he balked at the department's requirement that the design include fire escapes. For reasons that are unclear, the DOB dropped its requirement that the building contain fire escapes. In addition, the building was originally legally required to contain metal-framed windows, although this would have increased the cost of construction. The city's Board of Building Commissioners had granted an exemption to Black's syndicate, prompting allegations of favoritism. A new Buildings Department commissioner was appointed at the beginning of 1902, promising to enforce city building codes; this prompted general contractor Thompson–Starrett Co. to announce that the building's window frames would be made of fireproof wood with a copper coating.The building's steel frame was manufactured by the American Bridge Company in Pennsylvania. The frame had risen above street level by January 1902. Construction was then halted for several weeks, first because of a delay in steel shipments, then because of a blizzard that occurred in February. Further delays were caused by a strike at the factory of Hecla Iron Works, which was manufacturing elevators and handrails for the building. The steel was so meticulously pre-cut that, according to The New York Times, the steel pieces could be connected "without so much as the alteration of a bored hole, or the exchange of a tiny rivet". Workers used air-powered tools to rivet the steel beams together, since such equipment was more efficient than steam-powered tools at conducting power over long distances. The frame was complete by February 1902, and workers began installing the terracotta tiles as the framework of the top stories was being finished. By mid-May, the building was half-covered by terracotta tiling. The terracotta work was completed the next month, and the scaffolding in front of the building was removed. The Fifth Avenue Building Company had invested $1.5 million in the project.
Officials of the Fuller Company announced in August 1902 that the structure would be officially named after George A. Fuller, founder of the Fuller Company and "father of the skyscraper", who had died two years earlier. By then, the site had been known as the "flatiron" for several years; according to Christopher Gray of The New York Times, Burnham's and Fuller's architectural drawings even labeled the structure as the "Flatiron Building". Although the Fuller name was used for some time after the building's completion, locals persisted in calling it the Flatiron, to the displeasure of Harry Black and the building's contractors. In subsequent years, the edifice officially came to be known as the Flatiron Building, and the Fuller name was transferred to a newer 40-story structure at 597 Madison Avenue.