Flatiron Building

One of the next places we visited was the Flatiron Building. The distinctive triangle-shaped building has been one of the most famous skyscrapers in the city since it was first built, way back in 1902.



I wanted to visit here again, since the building was covered in scaffolding on my last visit to New York in 2006. It is a beautiful old building, and there is a reason why people have been taking pictures of it for decades. My Aunt actually had a poster of a photo taken in 1904 by Edward Steichen, and I had that shot in mind when I was walking around the building taking pictures. This is my shot that was inspired by his photo (it's different, the area around the Flatiron has changed slightly in the past 104 years.



The Flatiron was one of the tallest buildings in the city when it was built, but surprisingly it was not well-received at the time. People at first called it "Burnham's Folly," after the famous architect who designed it, Daniel Burnham. Many assumed the building's odd shape and its height would cause it to collapse. But of course that never happened, and the building is one of the most iconic buildings in New York. In the years since it was built, it has been used in countless movies and TV shows to serve as a emblem of New York City. My favorite example is that the Flatiron was the home of Channel 6, the workplace of April O'Neil in the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.





The Flatiron stands right by Madison Square, a city park that is surrounded by some of the city's first skyscrapers. The park opened in 1847, and is named after President James Madison.





One of the most prominent buildings along Madison Square is the Met Life Tower, which was the tallest building in the world when it opened in 1909. It lost the title just a few years later in 1913, when the Woolworth Building was constructed in Lower Manhattan. The building was designed to look similar to the St Mark's Campanile in Venice.



The statue here is of William Seward, who was a governor and senator from New York who also served as the Secretary of State from 1861-1869 (and was nearly killed as part of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln). Here's another shot of the statue, taken during my visit in 2006 after a blizzard.



And one last shot from Madison Square, with a view of another famous New York landmark off in the distance.