Interestingly, it appears the name predated construction of the skyscraper.
“Though the Flatiron Building is often said to have gotten its famous name from its similarity to a certain household appliance, the triangular region contained by Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 22nd and 23rd Streets had in fact been known as the “Flat Iron” prior to the building’s construction.”
I suspect the architect, Daniel Burnham may not have been entirely happy with the nickname “Flatiron Building”, since he designed it as “a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling”.
Rochester has a Triangle Building that dates from 1897. Wiki doesn’t have a general entry for for buildings of that name but there are others, including one in NYC.
The structure originally named the Hay Building in Portland, Maine, dates from 1826.
My dad spray painted his mother’s old flat irons and used them as a decorative item in our family home. He had a nice vintage collection of household and farm items from the very early 20th century. The flat irons were never used again but I’m quite familiar with what they are. Modern electric irons retain pretty much the same shape, but much larger.
My great grandfather was an architect and he designed and built this ‘flatiron’ or ‘triangle’ building in Ft. Worth. I’m not sure when it existed but probably it was built sometime around the 1880s or so. Unfortunately it’s gone now, all that remains are some pieces of ornate limestone carvings that I salvaged and are in my father’s study.
My GGF was an artist too, he did the picture above which I had framed and it’s in our entranceway of our home. Here is a detail, albeit poor lighting and cellphone camera, of people gathered at the entrance.
The OP wasn’t asking for a definition or origin. It only came up because one person made a mistake regarding the origin of the term as it applies to architecture. Someone corrected that only three posts later.
In the 1970s, it was occupied by several sex clubs, including one called the Toilet in the basement. In 1990, a friend of mine lived for a time in an apartment on the top floor; his bedroom had a cage in it from the flat’s days as an S&M club.
It’s a very common shape in Europe, where streets are less likely to have been laid out geometrically. Here, for example, is a bad picture of a hotel where I stayed in Paris. The building two down is also triangular, though you can’t see it in the photo.
It dates from long after the other buildings in this thread, and has a different use and history, but the Landau Building at MIT (Building #66), occupied by the chemical Engineering department, is the most extreme triangle building I know of. Unlike the other triangle buildings, it comes to an actual well-defined and “sharp” point: https://www.google.com/search?q=MIT++Building+66&noj=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2naK-3IvLAhUOz2MKHWFQA3IQsAQIVA&biw=1920&bih=934
It went up in the mid-1970s. It looked so much like an ocean liner that the crew building it cut out a large anchor from plywood, painted it black, and hung it up at the “prow”. Students put up their own anchor later
Laney College in Oakland, Ca., has a triangular building, although it doesn’t appear to be as narrow as the others discussed here, and the architectural styling appears modern. Photo from some blurb on their web site.
There’s nothing unusual about wedge-shaped buildings. In any urban area that has plazas or piazzas from which streets radiate, you’ll have wedge shaped plots, and where you have wedge-shaped plots in urban areas you’ll have wedge-shaped buildings…
What’s significant about the Flatiron building is is not it’s wedge shape. It has more to do with the fact that it’s the first significant Chicago school building in New York City, its use of a steel frame, its distinctive exterior styling and its height - when built, it was one of only two skyscrapers north of 14th St.
There are plenty of non-flat irons including golf irons, curling irons and manacles. If you just say “An iron” without context you might not be understood. If it had been called “The Iron Building” people would think it was made of iron, rather than the shape. *Flatiron *removes the ambiguity.
