This is New York’s Flatiron Building.
Despite standing just 22-storeys tall on an island full of massive skyscrapers
it’s managed to endure as a cake-slice shaped icon of this city since 1902.
It's not just a building, it's an oddity…it has endured as the funny duck of New York.That
unusual triangular shape has captured the eyes of photographers, tourists,
and movie and TV directors for decades. But in recent years, this world-famous structure has
sat empty and under scaffolding only for a New York court to then order it be put
up for grabs at auction in early 2023 – an auction that seems to have turned
into a bit of a farce.It’s the latest uncertain chapter in the long story of this building – a
building that’s seen so much of New York’s history unfold and endured so much already.
This is the story of how one of the city’s strangest towers came to be,
how it went on to become iconic,
and why the current struggles around its sale will probably only make it more famous.
Manhattan’s grid street layout is hard to miss. But cutting its own path through much
of it is Broadway – and where that crosses Fifth Avenue a rather awkward plot of land gets created.
Now this city is famous for its ambition,
and small awkward plots of land haven’t stopped it yet – not even way back in 1901.
Purchasing the site in May of that year, the Fuller Company appointed Chicago’s Daniel Burnham
to design a new headquarters for the firm that maximised every inch of the available land.
He came back with an eye-catching and ornately detailed 22-storey slice of steel
and stonework then known as the Fuller Building. With the design approved and a number of shorter
residential and commercial structures demolished,construction on the new tower
started racing ahead; at times adding a new floor every week.
With an unusual footprint, hardly any site working space and busy New York streets on
either side of them, construction teams had to be clever and following a recent change in
the city’s fire codes that restricted it, this became one of earliest buildings in
the city to shun load-bearing masonry and instead take advantage of steel for its structural frame.
More than 3,500 tonnes of it was prefabricated off site in Pennsylvania and dropped into place
almost immediately when it arrived, minimising the need for storage. Closely following the
steel frame skywards was the building’s then-revolutionary curtain wall cladding
system: ornate terracotta and limestone stonework that was used to simply infill
and clad around the structural steel work that carries the building’s weight.
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Now, let’s get back to that triangular wedge of engineering brilliance.
As the frame rose, onlookers often stopped to watch the spectacle.
Unlike many high-rise buildings that taper or step back as they rise, the Flatiron mimics
a Greek column. Its top and bottom are slightly wider than its middle section.
That sharp top corner of the building is a mere two metres
wide with an incredible angle of just 25 degrees.
It's all based on Beaux-Arts design, which came from Paris.
Alice Sparberg Alexiou knows a thing or two about the Flatiron
Building. In fact she wrote a book on it. Because architects like Burnham, like Louis
Sullivan They all went to Beaux-arts...and they studied this Beaux Arts design like...which
incorporates all these renaissance and classical elements into a modern, quote, modern structure,
the skyscraper. And took it to America and then adapted it to American cities.
With such sharp angles and large, open streets running down to it, engineers painstakingly
considered the building’s aerodynamics. The steel frame was built to withstand up
to four times the expected wind loads acting on it. Still, gusts from the north would split
around the sides of the building, creating a gusty experience for people on the street.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the interior layout created some design quirks too. Office space was
tight and sometimes a challenge to furnish. The elevators were powered by water-pressure and
infamously slow, occasionally springing leaks and causing flooding. Still it was better than
the alternative: a single 22-storey stair climb for those wanting to reach the top floor.When
it was completed in 1902 there weren’t exactly jubilant celebrations. In fact,
the unusual structure was met with consternation and became dubbed “Burnham’s Folly”.
Despite being sold at auction for a mere $100,000 during the Great Depression,
the 121-years since the building’s completion have largely proven the naysayers wrong.
The tower is now an iconic symbol of New York, drawing tourists from all over the
world – and though the original site that the Fuller Company purchased back in 1902
had been loosely called the Flat Iron for a time, the name Flatiron Building
has now formally stuck and even given its name to this district of Manhattan.
Over the years, it's been home to a variety of companies and retail tenants.
Back in 1966, it was designated as an official city landmark:
a special status that means any renovations, construction,
or demolition works must be approved in advance by a government commission.
Thankfully you’ll find structures like
Grand Central Terminal and the Empire State on the same list.
In 1989, the Flatiron was further elevated to National Historic Landmark status.
But if such classifications were meant to preserve a sense of reverence for this
structure then you wouldn’t really know it today. The Flatiron has sat empty ever since
its last tenants, Macmillan Publishers, left in 2019 and renovation works began.
The works, which have partly taken place through the pandemic, have triggered multiple
disagreements among the building’s current owners and future tenants. Things got so
bad that the New York State Supreme Court ordered an auction on the building in 2023: the first of
its kind in nearly 100 years. These other owners, who comprise 75% of the building, which they are,
Jeff Gurral, who's a big real estate person in New York, the Sorgente group,
which is based in Rome, and a few other you know, people have 75% of the property
and Nason has it and Silverstein has 25%. So their intention was to buy it back at auction,
and that was how they were going to get rid of Nathan. The auction was held outside,
on the footsteps of this courthouse with bids starting at $50M. Over the course of about
40 minutes things quickly escalated before an unexpected and unknown buyer called Jacob Garlick
beat out Jeff Gural, the building’s current majority interest holder, with a bid of $190M.
Now, given that the building’s value reportedly decreased after the pandemic and was in need
of more than $100M of renovations this was something of a surprising twist. But it’s
not where the story ends. In yet another bizarre turn, Garlick disappeared. He failed to make the
$19M down payment within the required time period and has yet to reply to multiple messages from
the media. So at this stage you’re probably wondering how something like this is even
possible. Surely you can’t just roll up to a building auction, out-bid everyone and vanish?
Well according to court filings that we’ve seen – bidders weren’t required to pay a deposit of any
sort to participate in the auction. It wasn’t until after the event that a winner needed to
provide any proof of funds. That’s something that real estate experts say is a highly
unusual practice and it seems to have led to well … just about anyone joining in. Alice,
who actually attended the auction, said she’s heard speculations about Garlick and his relation
to one of the building’s former owners: Nathan Silverstein. There's something, you know, weird
going on…some people suspect that Nathan put him up to it so that they would up the he could keep
upping the price… and then Nathan would walk away with more money because he.. had lost the building
For now, who Jacob Garlick is and what exactly he was doing remain unknown – and
with no definitive owner right now, the future of this landmark building hangs in the balance.
121 years is a long time in New York and this building has seen it all; from the
initial opposition to its existence, through the Great Depression, a world war, the immense changes
that the second half of the 20th Century brought and now a reshaping in how we use our cites.
A headline-grabbing auction battle is the latest compelling twist in the amazing
history of this icon. Far from being its downfall, it’s likely to help make it even more legendary.
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You can learn more about the Flatiron Building and the other topics on our
channel over on The World’s Best Construction Podcast – available now wherever you get your
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