The Flatiron -- The New York Landmark at the Incomparable City that Arose With It

THE FLATIRON book review

Alice Sparberg Alexiou, author of The Flatiron -- The New York Landmark at the Incomparable City that Arose With It -- understands that people make the story.
Even when the subject is a thing, in this case an building so iconic that an entire hip neighborhood in Lower Manhattan hitches its marketing on its name (Flatiron District), people are the essence of storytelling.

We learned that advice from Wil Haygood, the award winning author and journalist who taught us in our early journalism days to "report the hell out of the story, but make sure in the end to tell it through people."

So in Alexiou's Flatiron, we are introduced to Harry Black, an early 20th century multimillionaire whose name and story didn't not survive even a half year in New York's rich history.

Black -- the hard-charging born salesman who wouldn't know a cornice from a cornerstone, who couldn't care whether architecture was created by Luis Henry Sullivan or Sully from the corner bar -- is the backbone for Alexiou's realistic and loving portrayal of the now beloved, but once ridiculed Flatiron Building.

Her roots to building, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet at 23rd Street, are deep -- her immigrant grandfather bought a stake in the landmark in 1946 and the not-so-lucrative piece of the Flatiron pie remained in her family for decades.

In Flatiron, (Thomas Dunne Books, $26.99), we learn that the historic building never was intended to draw its name from the narrow piece of triangular property that reminded people of a similar-shaped stove iron.

The structure's official name was the Fuller Building, intended the be the New York City flagship of the huge and growing Fuller Company of Chicago. Black married the daugher George Fuller, the Chicago construction magnate semi-accurately described as the father of the skyscraper.

Fuller worked like a dog, but died young in 1900, two years before the Flatiron -- named Fuller Building in his honor -- opened under Black's (now president of Fuller's company) guidance in 1902.

Along the way, we are introduced to Daniel Burnham, the famed architect and city planner who butted heads with Black on every step of the way toward building the 22-story Beaux-Arts classic.

We also meet Frederick P. Dinkelberg, the long-forgotten architect who worked on-site to see the fruition of both Burnham's classic design and the late Fuller's dream of building tall buildings supported by steel skeletons rather than thick, load-bearing masonry walls.

In Flatiron, we read that savvy New Yorkers were not always that way, for most of Gotham either feared the narrow building would topple over in a wind gust or ridiculed it along with supposedly knowledgeable critics that failed to see the beauty of its terra-cotta bricks and tiles and its playful curves at the joints of an otherwise sharply triangular 285-foot skyscraper.

The drama also follows the rise and fall and rebirth of Madison Square -- the shady city park immediately north of the Flatiron's narrow lot. The Square was fashionable, seedy and fashionable again through the years -- while Manhattan's department stores and well-off residential crowd moved northward.

A visitor today will notice an extremely popular Madison Square Park, where people wait in line an hour for a Shake Shack burger and tourists compete with workers and locals for the shadiest benches in an area recently enhanced with pedestrian areas to tame the busy north-south traffic.

Through it all, Alexiou weaves a clearly-written narrative of Black's triumphs and human frailties, as well as the Flatiron's various lives as: a host to publishers and small businesses, elite office space and third rate office space, a victim or real estate manipulation by Harry Helmsley and apple of the eye of famed photographers including Alfred Stieglitz.

http://us.macmillan.com/theflatiron

Wright is the author of 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.