| Flatiron Buildings
Flatiron buildings are named after the iron whose triangular shape they resemble. Indeed, they look more like massive ships cuttnig through the oceans of city streets. Not all of them are “skyscrapers.” While the most famous is the one in New York, other cities have both old and modern versions of this intriguing construction. San Francisco has several both old and new. Several are featured here. This page shows Toronto and New York; for other examples, click on Flatiron Buildings 2, Flatiron Buildings 3 and Flatiron Buildings 4. |
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Toronto The Gooderham Building, at 49 Wellington Street, known as Toronto’s Flatiron Building, was built in 1892 at a cost of $18,000. David Roberts was the architect. It has Gothic-Romanesque features, a sandstone façade, and green copper roof flashings. It contains the first manual electrical elevator in Toronto. Shown here as well is the famous trompe l’oeil mural on its back wall.
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New York The Fuller Building, New York’s Flatiron Building, was built in 1902 by architect Daniel Burnham. It has 22 floors and is 285 feet high. At the time it was built, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure. New York City’s first skyscraper, it is located where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue, across from Madison Square Park. It is considered a Beaux-Arts building, applying principles from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. One of the features of that style is to have decorated surface areas, clearly present in the Flatiron Building. As described in the classic work, What Style Is It, by John Poppeliers and S. Allen Chambers, Jr., Beaux-Arts principles “emphasized the study of Greek and Roman structures, composition and symmetry, accompanied by elaborate two-dimensional wash or watercolor renderings of the buildings.” For more information, see Flatiron Magazine on line.
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All text and images copyright (c) Steven M. Richman 1999-2006