Rising 285 feet, the Flatiron Building was shorter than several contemporary skyscrapers, but it remains a New York favorite due to its dramatic triangular "flat-iron" shape that narrows to just 6 feet at Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd St. The official name, the Fuller Building, referred to Fuller Construction Co., the major skyscraper builders who erected, owned, and had headquarters in the speculative office building.[1]The Flatiron Building was built by the Chicago-based Fuller Company—a group founded by George Fuller, “the father of the skyscraper”—to be their New York headquarters. The company`s president, Harry Black, was never able to make the public call the Flatiron the Fuller Building, however. Black`s was the country`s largest real estate firm, constructing Macy`s department store, and soon after the Plaza Hotel, the Savoy Hotel, and many other iconic buildings in New York as well as in other cities across the country. With an ostentatious lifestyle that drew constant media scrutiny, Black made a fortune only to meet a tragic, untimely end.
Due to the diagonal path of Broadway, the western and eastern facades converge, forming a "peak" at the northern corner of the building where Fifth Avenue and Broadway intersect with East 23rd Street
The building, which has been called "one of the world's most iconic skyscrapers and a quintessential symbol of New York City", anchors the south end of Madison Square and the north end of the Ladies' Mile Historic District.
As with numerous other wedge-shaped buildings, the name "Flatiron" derives from its resemblance to a cast-iron clothes iron
Designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Dinkelberg, it was one of the tallest buildings in the city upon its 1902 completion, at 20 floors high
The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street
Relief sculpture on the iconic stone facade
Name etched on the glass wall at the entrance to the building