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Fun Flat-Iron Facts |
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 What's in a name?
The most subversive of all the fun facts about the Flatiron Building perhaps is that it does not truly replicate the shape of a turn-of-the-century household flatiron, which would have been curved at the sides like the prow of a ship.
Instead, the legendary three-sided building at the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street is one of New York's oldest surviving skyscrapers and it forms a geometrically perfect, straight-edged right triangle.
Big picture
Although its 307-foot height is puny in comparison to the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, its popularity was never eclipsed, because it is the only famous Manhattan skyscraper that enables tourists to take a picture of the entire building from the ground up!
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 In fact, the Flatiron was never the tallest building in New York; when the 700-foot Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower went up in 1909, it wasn't even the tallest in the neighborhood. But thanks to its unusual shape and its location in the middle of those avenues it has held its own.
Location, location, location
The palazzo-ish wedge by architect Daniel H. Burnham & Company has won ecstatic praise through the years for its rusticated limestone and ornamented terra cotta. The building always lent its tenants cachet, and it still does.
23 kisses for who?
There is also all that lore about the phrase "23 skiddoo," attributed to the fierce Flatiron winds that raised skirts and attracted the interest of passing gentlemen. Police officers there kept the gawkers moving along by saying "23 skiddoo," the equivalent of "scram."
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Evidence to support this windy legend includes Library of Congress film footage from 1903 that shows Flatiron gusts, billowing skirts, male sidewalk superintendents and a flatfoot on the Flatiron beat.
Magnificent
For decades the landmark building commanded images on postcards, mugs, plates and tchotchkes. The building inspired unforgettable photographs by Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz.
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