Flatiron Building

About

The Flatiron Building (originally the Fuller Building) is a 22-story, 307-foot-tall (93.6 m) steel-framed triangular building at 175 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, New York, US. Designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, it opened in 1902. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street—where the building's 87-foot (27 m) back end is located—with East 23rd Street grazing the triangle's northern (uptown) peak. The name "Flatiron" derives from its triangular shape, which recalls that of a cast-iron clothes iron.

The Flatiron Building was developed as the headquarters of construction firm Fuller Company, which acquired the site from the Newhouse family in May 1901. Construction proceeded rapidly, and the building opened on October 1, 1902; it originally stood 285 feet (87 m) tall. In its early days, it was sometimes called "Burnham's Folly" because of locals' skepticism of the building's structural integrity. The building was originally 20 floors; a "cowcatcher" retail space (a low attached building named for its resemblance to the device on rail locomotives) and penthouse were added shortly after the building's opening. The Fuller Company sold the building in 1925 to an investment syndicate. The Equitable Life Assurance Society took over the building after a foreclosure auction in 1933 and sold it to another syndicate in 1945.