47. The Flatiron Building

A monument rising from an odd sliver of land

The Flatiron Building, initially known as the Fuller Building, designed by Daniel H. Burnham, 1902.

The old Wickquasgeck trail originally snaked through the brushy hills along the length of Manhattan. When the Dutch arrived, they widened it into the main road leading up the island. Nearly two centuries later, the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 envisioned everything north of Houston Street as an orderly grid and tried to do away with the problematic diagonal street. But by that point, Broadway—the old Native American trail—was there to stay.

And so an awkward wedge of land, a triangle amid rectangles, was formed. By the time Harry S. Black bought the lot in 1901, it contained a jumble of buildings with a large wall dedicated to advertising, a precursor to Times Square. Black envisioned something others couldn’t: a monument rising from this odd sliver of land.

The Flatiron Building is only six feet wide at the tip, a constraint that rendered the site worthless to any developer unwilling to think radically. Steel frame construction was new and still distrusted, but Black and architect Daniel Burnham knew a vertical grid of steel would support the structure. Skeptics called it “Burnham’s Folly,” predicting the wind would topple it. It didn’t.

Instead, the triangular building appeared to be in movement, plowing northward like the bow of a ship. The tiny offices in the narrow tip of the building became unlikely status symbols, with wraparound windows offering panoramic views of the city. The building’s shape, the artifact of an ancient footpath overlaid with geometry, gave rise to its most desirable spaces.

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Special thanks to Peter Wallace for suggesting the Flatiron Building.

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Links:

• Photographs Before the Flatiron - New York History

• “How the Flatiron Building Went From a Presumed Folly to an Architectural Treasure” - Sofia Hallström, artnet, November 16, 2024

• Edward Steichen, The Flatiron, 1904 - Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Flatiron Building - Wikipedia

• Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 - Wikipedia

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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.

I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment!