The Flatiron Building was designed by Chicago’s Daniel Burnham in the Beaux-Arts style. Like a classical Greek column, its limestone and glazed terra-cotta façade is divided into a base, shaft and capital. Early sketches by Daniel Burnham show a design with an (unexecuted) clockface and a far more elaborate crown than in the actual building. Since it employed a steel skeleton, building to 22 stories was relatively simple and it was a technique familiar to the Fuller Company, a contracting firm with considerable expertise in building such tall structures. At the vertex, the triangular tower is only 6.5 feet (2 m) wide; viewed from above, this ‘pointy’ end of the structure describes an acute angle of about 25 degrees. The strong downdrafts in this area were reputed to raise women’s skirts as they passed. New York’s Flatiron Building was not the first building of its type: both the Gooderham Building of Toronto, built in 1892, and the 1897 English-American Building in Atlanta predate it. Both, however, are smaller than their New York counterpart.
I found myself agape, admiring a skyscraper — the prow of the Flatiron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the late-afternoon light. – H.G. Wells (1906)
The building, which took its name from the triangular lot on which it was built[2] – the Flatiron block, so called because it was shaped like a clothing iron – was officially named the Fuller Building after George A. Fuller, founder of the company that financed its construction two years after his death.[3] Locals took an immediate interest in the building, placing bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked it down. This presumed susceptibility to damage also gave it the nickname Burnham’s Folley.[4] The building is also said to have helped coin the phrase “23 skidoo”, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women’s dresses being blown up by the winds swirling around the building due to the strong downdrafts.[5]
[edit] Architectural influence
Two famous buildings in the Netherlands – Het Strijkijzer (Dutch for “Flatiron”) in The Hague and The Vestada Tower in Eindhoven – were inspired by the Flatiron Building.[citation needed].
[edit] The Flatiron Building today
Today, the Flatiron Building is frequently seen on television commercials and documentaries as an easily recognizable symbol of the city, shown, for instance, in the opening credits of The Late Show With David Letterman or in scenes of New York City that are shown during scene transitions in the show “Friends”.[6][7] It is depicted as the headquarters of The Daily Bugle, for which Peter Parker is a freelance photographer in the Spider-man movies. It is a popular spot for tourist photographs and a National Historic Landmark since 1989,[8][9][10] but it is also a functioning office building which is currently the headquarters of publishing companies held by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck of Stuttgart, Germany, under the umbrella name of Macmillan, including St. Martin’s Press, Tor/Forge, Picador and Henry Holt and Company.[11] Macmillan is renovating some floors, and their website comments that:
The Flatiron’s interior is known for having its strangely-shaped offices with walls that cut through at an angle on their way to the skyscraper’s famous point. These “point” offices are the most coveted and feature amazing northern views that look directly upon another famous Manhattan landmark, the Empire State Building.[11]
During a 2005 restoration of the Flatiron Building an illegal 15 story vertical advertising banner covered the facade of the building. The advertisement elicited protests from many New York City residents, prompting the New York City Department of Buildings to step in and force the building’s owners to remove the advertisement.[12]
In January 2009, an Italian real estate investment firm bought a majority stake in the Flatiron Building, with plans to turn it into a world-class luxury hotel, although the conversion may have to wait 10 years until the leases of the current tenants run out. The Sorgente Group S.p.A., which is based in Rome, controls just over 50% of the building and plans to increase its stake. The firm’s Historic and Trophy Buildings Fund owns a number of prestigious buildings in France and Italy, and was involved in buying, and then selling, a stake in New York’s Chrysler Building. The value of the 22-story Flatiron Building, which is already zoned by the city to allow it to become a hotel, is estimated to be $190 million.[13]
