Burnham and Root had previously designed The Montauk Building, a ten storey high steel commercial block which was constructed between and Although the building was demolished in to make way for the First National Bank headquarters there are claims that the Montauk was the first building to be referred to as a skyscraper. Using the lessons learnt on projects such as The Montauk Building, Burnham set about designing and constructing the Flatiron Building which was originally called the Fuller Building in honour of George A.
Fuller a Chicago based architect and real estate developer. The latter had expanded his business to the NYC marketplace and is often credited as being the "inventor" of modern skyscrapers. However, NYC locals persisted in calling the new tower block "The Flatiron" a name which has since been made official. The rather abstract triangular shape of the building was governed by the layout of the plot owned by Harry S. The layout forms a triangular prism around an almost perfect right angle triangle so that the building is only six feet wide where the two longest sides of the building meet.
The buildings designed in the Beaux-Arts school are all characterised by symmetry and include lots of design elements, such as balconies, pilasters, balustrades etc. The Beaux-Arts school was also very fond of Italian and French renaissance influence so Burnham designed the building as a vertical Renaissance palazzo.
The building contains a skeleton of steel, and the building's frame was clad with limestone and terra-cotta curtain walling. Like a classical Greek column, its facade is divided into a base, shaft, and capital with limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terra-cotta as the floors rise,. The architects used the then-revolutionary curtain wall method.
This method took advantage of a change to New York City's building codes in , which eliminated the requirement that masonry be used for fireproofing considerations.
This opened the way for steel-skeleton construction. Once construction kicked off in the summer of the building went up at an amazingly fast pace of one floor a week. All the steel parts were meticulously pre-cut off-site and slotted together very quickly.
Impact The Flatiron Building has become an icon representative of New York City, but the critical response to it at the time was not completely positive, and what praise it garnered was often for the cleverness of the engineering involved. Montgomery Schuyler, editor of Architectural Record said that its "awkwardness [is] entirely undisguised, and without even an attempt to disguise them, if they have not even been aggravated by the treatment.
The treatment of the tip is an additional and it seems wanton aggravation of the inherent awkwardness of the situation. But suppose he needed a bookcase? Undoubtedly he has a highly eligible place from which to view processions.
But for the transaction of business? Futurist H. Wells wrote in his book The Future in America: A Search After Realities: I found myself agape, admiring a sky-scraper the prow of the Flat-iron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the afternoon light.
The Flatiron was to attract the attention of numerous artists. It was the subject of one of Edward Steichen's atmospheric photographs, taken on a wet wintry late afternoon in , as well as a memorable image by Alfred Stieglitz taken the year before, to which Steichen was paying homage.
Designed by the renowned architect Daniel Burnham of Chicago, the Flatiron Building was not exactly an instant hit. Sidewalk superintendents rolled their eyes and laughed while it was under construction, taking bets on when it would collapse. The New York Times called it a "monstrosity. Years before the building went up, the triangular plot of land on which it stands was known as the "flat iron.
Germaine Hotel, then the Cumberland Apartments, whose northern face was regarded as prime advertising space and was used by The New York Times to promote itself as the repository of "all the news that's fit to print. Its first formal name was the Fuller Building, named for George A.
Fuller, head of the construction company that built it. Fuller died in , two years before the Flatiron was completed, but Fuller Construction maintained offices in the building for 20 years.
When it was completed, the Flatiron Building could be clearly seen from the 59th Street entrance to Central Park. Don't have an account?
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