We very much enjoyed Helene Stapinski’s NY Times profile of one of our favorite NYC buildings, the venerable Flatiron Building, which sits at 23rd Street, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway, criss-cross, and we think you will, too.
We learned a little something, too, reading the article. For instance, we didn’t know that the building’s 21st floor was an add-on, in 1905 — constructed three years after the building’s initial completion.
And while we had a vague notion that the Flatiron housed publishing concerns, we didn’t know that Macmillan Publishers and its various imprints take up the entire structure, save for the commercial spaces on the ground floor.
There’s also a slideshow, with contemporary and historical photos of the Flatiron (and a few of its tenants).
Here’s a tip not found in Ms. Stapinski’s story, for you out-of-towners who hope to one day visit NYC: Directly across the Fifth Avenue from the Flatiron, just a door or two north of 22nd Street, sits Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, an old-school lunch counter of the type you just don’t fine anymore. It’s not quiet as old as the Flatiron, but any business that opened in the economically bleak year of 1929 and has managed to stick around for 81 years is doing something right.
Both the Flatiron and its culinary neighbor across the avenue are don’t-misses.
