My New York Postcards
Flatiron Building
175 Fifth Avenue, N.Y.
The Flatiron Building was designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham as a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling. Unlike New York's early skyscrapers, which took the form of towers arising from a lower, blockier mass, the Flatiron Building epitomizes the Chicago school conception: like a classical Greek column, its facade of limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terra-cotta as the floors rise) is divided into a base, shaft and capital. Early sketches by Daniel Burnham show a design with an (unexecuted) clockface and a far more elaborate crown than in the actual building.
Burnham, though he maintained overall control of the design process, was not directly connected with the details of the structure as built; credit should be shared with his designer Frederick P. Dinkelberg (c 1859—1935), a Pennsylvania-born architect in Burnham's office, who first worked for Burnham at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Working drawings for the Flatiron Building, however, remain to be located, though renderings were published at the time of construction in American Architect and The Architectural Record. Read more
I worked in the Flatiron Building for a few years while I was taking my Master of Library and Information Science. I catalogued books in the library of The New York State Association of Retarded Children (It may have by now changed it's name to NYS Assn of Retarded Citizens)
Beth of The Best Hearts Are Crunchy is the lovely host of Postcard Friendship Friday.
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