Flatiron Building
A 22-story wedge as thin as a clothes iron: 87 feet across its back, tapering to a knife-edge peak where Fifth Avenue meets Broadway.
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Burnham and Dinkelberg's 1902 tower drew so much doubt that locals nicknamed it "Burnham's Folly," skeptical the thin steel frame would stand. That frame was engineered to withstand four times the area's maximum wind force.
What to look for
- The facade split into three parts like a classical column: a three-story limestone base, glazed terracotta above.
- The 'cowcatcher'—a low retail space added shortly after the building opened, named for its resemblance to the device on rail locomotives.
- The rounded corners meeting at the northern peak, where Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 23rd Street converge.
Entrances to the 23rd Street subway station (R and W trains) are right beside it; the building is being converted to residential condominiums, planned for 2026.
Flatiron Building is one of 38 sights worth the detour in New York, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the New York pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in New York
- Statue of LibertyFrance's gift to the U.S.: a crowned, robed woman raising a torch over New York Harbor, long read as a welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
- Empire State BuildingRide up to the 86th- or 102nd-floor deck and look straight down on Midtown Manhattan.
- World Trade Center & 9/11 MemorialTwo reflecting pools now sit in the exact footprints where the Twin Towers stood until September 11, 2001.
- Wall StreetUnder 2,000 feet of pavement that stands in for all of American finance — named for a wall that hasn't existed since 1699.
- The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art)1.5 million works under one roof, from Sumerian stone to modern American rooms — a day here barely scratches it.
- Central ParkThe most visited urban park in the US — an estimated 42 million visits a year — built by hand on the razed land of a Black settlement, Seneca Village.