Documents the story of the Flatiron building from its construction as a Fuller Company headquarters to the suicide of Fuller's president, Harry Black, offering insight into how the structure reflected changing technology and culture.
Documents the story of the well-recognized New York building from its construction as a Fuller Company headquarters to the ostentatious life and suicide of Fuller's president, Harry Black, offering insight into how the structure's design reflected changing period technology and culture.
"Alice Sparberg Alexiou elucidates the complex web of human relationships built around the Flatiron, bringing life to the poignant and tragic story of the skyscraper, its creators, denizens, and critics in New York 1900---a rich and contentious setting shaped not only by buildings, streets, and squares, and the popular arts of music, theater, and film, but also by unbridled speculation, gambling, corruption, conflict, and intrigue."
---Gail Fenske, author of The Skyscraper and the City
A Modern Building unequalled in Location, Comfort, Appointments, and Convenience.
Large and small offices. Entire floors will be arranged to meet the requirements of tenants.
The marvelous story of the Flatiron: the instantly recognizable building that signaled the start of a new era in New York history.
Critics hated it. The public feared it would topple over. Passersby were knocked down by the winds. But even before it was completed, the Flatiron Building had become an unforgettable part of New York City.
The Flatiron Building was built by the Chicago-based Fuller Company--a group founded by George Fuller, "the father of the skyscraper"--to be their New York headquarters. The company's president, Harry Black, was never able to make the public call the Flatiron the Fuller Building, however. Black's was the country's largest real estate firm, constructing Macy's department store, and soon after the Plaza Hotel, the Savoy Hotel, and many other iconic buildings in New York as well as in other cities across the country. With an ostentatious lifestyle that drew constant media scrutiny, Black made a fortune only to meet a tragic, untimely end.
In The Flatiron, Alice Sparberg Alexiou chronicles not just the story of the building but the heady times in New York at the dawn of the twentieth century. It was a time when Madison Square Park shifted from a promenade for rich women to one for gay prostitutes; when photography became an art; motion pictures came into existence; the booming economy suffered increasing depressions; jazz came to the forefront of popular music--and all within steps of one of the city's best-known and best-loved buildings.
