The Flatiron Building is a right-angle triangle, not an isosceles, as many people think. Its street address is 175 Fifth Avenue, but mail addressed to “Flatiron Building” will reach its destination just as quickly. When it was completed, the Flatiron Building could be clearly seen from the 59th Street entrance to Central Park. In 1925, it moved uptown to the new Fuller Building at 57th Street and Madison Avenue. Fuller died in 1900, two years before the Flatiron was completed, but Fuller Construction maintained offices in the building for 20 years. Fuller, head of the construction company that built it. Its first formal name was the Fuller Building, named for George A. Germaine Hotel, then the Cumberland Apartments, whose northern face was regarded as prime advertising space and was used by The New York Times to promote itself as the repository of “all the news that’s fit to print.” The slogan appeared there, glowing in electric lights, before it was ever published in The Times. Years before the building went up, the triangular plot of land on which it stands was known as the “flat iron.” Once farmland, it later held the St. The New York Times called it a “monstrosity.” Other critics labeled it “Burnham’s Folly” and one likened it to “a stingy piece of pie.” Sidewalk superintendents rolled their eyes and laughed while it was under construction, taking bets on when it would collapse. The Flatiron Building is hardly a “hidden gem,” but here are some details about it that might not be common knowledge.ĭesigned by the renowned architect Daniel Burnham of Chicago, the Flatiron Building was not exactly an instant hit. It was immortalized in early photos by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen and since its completion in 1902, it has been recorded by millions of lesser-known photographers and painters. It is one of the earliest romantic symbols of New York City, an icon that has appeared in countless movie and television productions and on more postcards than perhaps any other modern building.
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