Flatiron Building

The Flatiron Building anchors a tight, triangular lot where Broadway slices diagonally across Fifth Avenue, creating a sharp, twenty-two-story prow that narrows to just six feet at its northern tip. Completed in nineteen oh two, the skyscraper takes its name from this dramatic, wedge-like silhouette, which recalls the shape of a common cast-iron clothes iron. Its steel-frame skeleton allowed for such thin, graceful walls that locals once doubted the structure’s integrity, mockingly dubbing the project Burnham’s Folly after its architect, Daniel Burnham.