Flatiron Building – a New York Landmark

If you watch any American movie whose action takes place in New York, anywhere near Manhattan, you will certainly see a triangular shaped building that you can recognize as interesting and unusual. It’s the Flatiron building and it is now one of New York’s landmarks. It is situated at the intersection of Broadway with Fifth Avenue and it is one of the oldest sky scrapers in New York. This project was completed in 1902, after the architect Daniel Burnham was appointed to draw the plans for the future building.And the original name of the building was Fuller building, being an office building.

1296781974 flatiron wikicommons5 664x1000

1296781974 flatiron wikicommons5 664x1000

But the actual “father” of Flatiron was Amos Eno who owned a three stories building in Manhattan and dreamed about having a skyscraper in its place. He was the one to bring Daniel Burnham from Chicago and start the whole project. But it was only in 1902 that this gorgeous building was finished. The architect imagined it as a Renaissance palazzo, as he called it, but only on vertical, not horizontal as they had been built until then.

1296781974 flatiron wikicommons5 664x1000
1296781974 flatiron wikicommons5 664x1000
1296781974 flatiron wikicommons5 664x1000
1296781974 flatiron wikicommons5 664x1000

He used the Beaux-Arts style to confer it a bourgeois air and style. This building was very different from all the other skyscrapers that were being built at the time in New York, as all the other ones had the shape of a tower , but this one looked more like a Greek column. Nowadays the building isĀ  housing offices and it has 22 stories, having a steel skeleton and also steel structures that make it resist the test of time very well. It has been one of the most representative imagines of New York for a long time now.