The Flatiron Building is a 22-story skyscraper in Manhattan, New
York, located at the junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and East
23rd Street. The building got its name because of the shape
resembling an iron. In turn, the quarter in which it is located
was named after the skyscraper.
Today, the Flatiron
Building is a national landmark and one of the symbols of the
Big Apple.
When laying Fifth Avenue between 23rd Street and Broadway, a
triangular section was formed with a base 26 meters long at 22nd Street
and with a top at 23rd Street. This place used to be a four-story hotel
Saint-Germain (Eng. St. Germaine) built in 1855.
In 1857, the
site and adjacent territories were purchased by the merchant Amos
Henault. Opposite the lot, between 23rd and 24th Streets, he built the
fashionable Fifth Avenue Hotel in 1859. In 1880, Hainaut demolished the
Saint-Germain Hotel and built in its place a seven-story Cumberland
apartment building and four more three-story buildings. In different
years there were various establishments such as dentistry and a hosiery
store in them. On the corner was the ticket office of the Erie Railroad.
Cumberland's elevation relative to neighboring development allowed
its north wall to be used for advertising signage. This was used by city
newspapers, including The New York Times and the New York Tribune. Over
time, important news began to be displayed on the wall, including the
results of the elections, which made the "triangle" one of the centers
of public life in New York.
After Hainaut's death in 1898, the
site was put up for auction. After several resales, it was bought out by
Harry Black, the manager of the Fuller real estate developer. Here it
was decided to build the company's headquarters and call it "Fuller
Building" in honor of the founder George Fuller, who died in December
1900.
In October 1871, most of Chicago's buildings were destroyed in the
Great Fire. Many high-rise buildings were destroyed: under the influence
of ultra-high temperatures, the masonry crumbled, and the steel beams
bent. Although the fire served as a catalyst for new development and the
accompanying economic growth of the city, in 1892 the City of Chicago
imposed a limit on the maximum height of buildings. In the same year, an
amendment was made to the New York City Planning Code. On the contrary,
it abolished fire-prevention requirements for the use of masonry in the
construction of steel-framed buildings. This greatly simplified the
construction of skyscrapers.
The architects of the project were
Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and Frederick Dinkelberg. They
embodied in the skyscraper many of the characteristics of the Chicago
style.
Work on the construction of the skyscraper began in
mid-1901. The steel beams for it were manufactured by the American
Bridge Company. At the same time, the process was organized in such a
way that many structural elements were assembled directly at the
manufacturing plant. As a result, the growth of the building was one
floor per week. By February 1902, the frame of the Flatiron was ready,
and by mid-May it was already half lined. The construction was completed
in June 1902, just a year after the start. At the time of construction,
the Flatiron Building was one of the tallest buildings in New York.
Although the skyscraper was originally given the official name
"Fuller Building", it did not catch on. The building, like the site,
evoked stable associations with the townspeople with an iron (English
flat-iron), which eventually gave the skyscraper its current name.
In the same year, Fuller entered the U.S. Realty" with a total cost
of $66 million. Over time, the affairs of the newly formed company did
not go very well, and in October 1925 Black was forced to sell the
skyscraper. The buyer was Lewis Rosenbaum, a Jewish investor from
Hungary. The cost of the deal was $2 million, the same amount that was
spent on the purchase of the site where the Flatiron stands and its
construction. In 1933, during the Great Depression, Rosenbaum himself
went bankrupt. The skyscraper became the property of the Equitable Life
Insurance Company, which rented it.
In 1946, Flatiron was bought
out by a group of investors, including Harry Helmsley. Six years later,
in 1952, the Fifth Avenue and Broadway entrances were reconstructed. The
place of doors trimmed with mahogany was taken by nondescript
"turntables" made of steel and glass, which are still installed today.
In 1991, the facade of the building was restored by Hurley & Farinella.
Six years later, in 1997, a deal was made to sell the building to
Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
In early 2009, the Italian
corporation Sorgente Group acquired half of the premises of the
skyscraper. The deal amounted to about $190 million. At the same time,
the corporation announced plans to increase its share over time by
buying out office space after the expiration of the lease term for
current tenants. According to the company's plans, the Flatiron will be
transformed from an office building into a luxury hotel.
"Iron" received mixed reviews from contemporaries. The rejection of
new trends in urban planning came mostly from Europeans. Thus, the
English artist Philip Burne-Jones called it a “vast horror”, H. G.
Wells’s skyscraper left the impression of “tremendous incompleteness”
(eng. immense incompleteness), and the French novelist Pierre Loti
complained that such “gloomy giants, <…> growing higher and higher;
terrifying and unbelievable”, it will be difficult to get used to. Maxim
Gorky, who arrived here in 1906, spoke unflatteringly about the
skyscraper and about New York in general:
This is a city, this is
New York. Twenty-story houses stand on the shore, silent and dark
"scrapers of the sky." Square, devoid of the desire to be beautiful,
stupid, heavy buildings rise up sullenly and boringly. In every house
one senses an arrogant arrogance in its height, in its ugliness.
On the other hand, American journalist John Corbin saw in the skyscraper
dominating Madison Square "an ocean-going steamboat towing Broadway."
The French illustrator Charles Huar found his "borderless silhouette"
quite disturbing; the building, like the architecture of the city,
evoked similar feelings in the outstanding composer Saint-Saens, who
visited New York in 1906.
Tenants
In the early years, the
headquarters of the Fuller company was located on the 19th floor.
Subsequently, he moved to another skyscraper owned by the company - the
Fuller Building on 57th Street.
The building also housed the
consulate of the Russian Empire, and from 1914 to 1918, the Russian
military procurement commissions, which were responsible for Russia's
extensive defense purchases in the United States during the First World
War. Also, the premises were rented by the editors of the American
Architect and Building News magazine of the publisher Frank Munsey, the
Equitable Life Assurance Society and others. On the corner were the
United Cigar Stores tobacco corporation, and on the basement floor there
was a fashionable restaurant for 1,500 people.
As of 2010, the
first floors of the skyscraper were still occupied by shops, and various
publishing houses were the main tenants of office space.
The ornament of the skyscraper is made mainly in the style of the
Italian Renaissance. In the design of the columns in the narrowest part
of the Flatiron, oriented to the north, one can trace the French
Renaissance. To decorate the pediment, as well as at the base of the
facade, Greek columns were used, consisting of a base, a trunk and a
capital. In the decoration of arches and columns, stone and terracotta
were used, the main facade - soft brick and the same terracotta; in the
lower part of the building - hewn dark yellow limestone. The window
frames are made of refractory wood lined with copper.
In general,
the style of the building, which combines several classical trends, is
characterized as a bazar.
"23 Skid"
Due to the unique location
of the Flatiron at the intersection of major highways opposite Madison
Square, there is a noticeable aerodynamic effect on 23rd Street near the
skyscraper. At the beginning of the 20th century, this place attracted
many men who looked at the fluttering skirts of the townswomen and what
the wind exposed under them. This "Flatironian" effect was reflected in
many postcards and illustrations of the time. In addition, since those
years, the phrase “23 skidoo” has come into use, with which the police
dispersed the then onlookers.