One of the first skyscrapers to be built uptown in 1902, the Fuller Building, named for the construction company who built it, sits on a triangular shaped lot between the intersections of Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and 23rd Street. Nicknamed the “Flatiron Building” because its shape resembles a clothes iron, Chicago architect Daniel Burnham clad its innovative steel structure in antique design elements. One of the most distinguished buildings in New York City, the Flatiron is a monument to the skill of laborers, engineers, and architects, a symbol of beauty and creativity, and a recognizable icon of the Manhattan skyline.

The Flatiron has attracted countless tourists, artists, authors, and photographers, such as Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz, both advocates of the early twentieth-century Photo-Secession movement. Published in the journal Camera Work, Steichen’s photogravure, VIII. The Flatiron – Evening., portrays the mystical building enveloped in a windswept rain. Essays and poems were also printed in Camera Work; poet Sadakichi Hartmann wrote about the Flatiron Building in 1903:

Iron structure of time
Rich, in showing no pretence
Fair, in frugalness sublime
Emblem staunch of common sense
Well may you smile over Gotham’s vast domain,
As dawn greets your pillars with roseate flame,
For future ages will proclaim
Your beauty
Boldly, without shame.