The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan of New York City, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally, the Flatiron District is bounded by 14th Street, Union Square and Greenwich Village to the south; the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and Chelsea to the west; 23rd Street and Madison Square (or NoMad) to the north; and Park Avenue South and Gramercy Park to the east. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Broadway cuts through the middle of the district, and Madison Avenue begins at 23rd Street and runs north. At the north (uptown) end of the district is Madison Square Park, which was completely renovated in 2001. The Flatiron District encompasses within its boundaries the Ladies' Mile Historic District and the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt, a National Historic Site. The Flatiron District was also the birthplace of Silicon Alley, a metonym for New York's high technology sector, which has since spread beyond the area. [7] [8]
The Flatiron District is part of Manhattan Community District 5. [9] Residents are represented by the Flatiron Alliance neighborhood association [10] [11] and nearby businesses by the Flatiron NoMad Partnership business improvement district, [12] [13] though the two have different (partially overlapping) boundaries. [4]
The designation "Flatiron District" dates from around 1985, and came about because of its increasingly residential character, [14] [15] and the influx of many restaurants into the area [16] – real estate agents needed an appealing name to call the area in their ads. Before that, the area was primarily commercial, with numerous small clothing and toy manufacturers, [17] and was sometimes called the Toy District. The Toy Center buildings at 23rd Street and Broadway date from this period, and the annual American International Toy Fair took place there beginning in 1903, except for 1945. When much of this business moved outside the U.S., the area began to be referred to as the Photo District [17] because of the large number of photographers' studios and associated businesses located there, the photographers having come because of the relatively cheap rents. [18]
As of the 2000s, many publishers have their offices in the district, as well as advertising agencies, [19] and the number of computer- and Web-related start-up companies in the area caused it to be considered part of "Silicon Alley" or "Multimedia Gulch", along with TriBeCa and SoHo. [20]
The Flatiron district was bounded by the center of the printing trades south of 23rd Street and the garment industry starting to the north of 23rd Street. With the collapse of the printing trades and the textile industries in New York City, the area's business focus shifted towards technology companies, and to firms serving the employees in the high-tech, finance, media, legal, and medical sectors.
The Flatiron District is located in the part of Manhattan where the bedrock Manhattan schist is located deeper underground than it is above 29th Street and below Canal Street. [21] Under the influence of zoning laws, the tallest buildings in the area used to top out at around 20 stories; older buildings of 3-6 floors are still numerous, especially on the side streets.[ citation needed ]
Notable buildings in the district include the Flatiron Building, one of the oldest of the original New York skyscrapers. To the east, at 1 Madison Avenue, is the Met Life Tower, built in 1909 and at 700 feet (210 m) was the tallest building in the world until 1913, when the Woolworth Building was completed. [22] [23] It is now occupied by Credit Suisse since MetLife moved their headquarters to the Pan Am Building. The marble clock tower of the building, modeled on St Mark's Campanile in Venice, dominates Madison Square and the park there. [24]
Nearby, on Madison Avenue between 26th and 27th Streets, on the site of the old Madison Square Garden, is the New York Life Building, built in 1928 and designed by Cass Gilbert, with a square tower topped by a pyramid covered with gold-colored tiles. [25] The Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State on Madison Avenue at 25th Street, was completed in 1900 by architect James Brown Lord, who used a third of the construction budget to decorate the building with statues and murals. [26]
Completed in 2010, One Madison Park, a 50-story luxury condominium tower, sits at 23 East 22nd Street, at the foot of Madison Avenue and across from Madison Square Park. [27] It is nearly as tall as the Met Life Tower (617.5 feet (188.2 m), compared to 700 feet (210 m) for the Tower), and taller than the Flatiron Building. The triplex penthouse was purchased for $57.3 million in February 2014. [28]
Another landmark is the 1909 sidewalk clock outside 200 Fifth Avenue. [29]
The campus of the City University of New York's Baruch College is located between 23rd and 25th Streets on Lexington Avenue, at the eastern edge of the district. [30] The Field Building at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue, the oldest building on the Baruch campus, [31] sits on the former site of the Free Academy (now City College of New York), which was founded in 1847 and was the first institution of free public higher education in the United States. [32] Baruch's Newman Vertical Campus as well as the Zicklin School of Business, the largest collegiate school of business in the United States, are also located on 24th and 25th Streets between Third and Lexington Avenues.
Cultural attractions in the area include Tibet House US, the Tibetan cultural preservation and education nonprofit founded by Robert Thurman and Richard Gere, which features a gallery and exhibitions on 15th Street. [33] The Museum of Sex and the Gershwin Hotel, are both located on 27th Street. The Gershwin is a tribute to the late pop artist Andy Warhol, and features some of his art and memorabilia throughout the hotel.[ citation needed ]
The area has many stores, such as Ann Taylor, Victoria's Secret, Club Monaco, and Origins. "Big-box" retailers dominate Sixth Avenue between 14th Street and 23rd Street, at the district's western edge.[ citation needed ]
One of the neighborhood's older restaurants is Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, founded in 1929. The classic 40-foot (12 m) lunch counter restaurant at 174 Fifth Avenue, near East 22nd Street, changed owners five times over the last 94 years. It was saved from closing in 2005 by a loyal customer, closed again in March 2021 due to the Covid pandemic, and reopened as S & P, named for a sandwich shop that opened in the space in 1928. [34] [35] [36]
Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Street, passing through Midtown, the Upper East Side, East Harlem, and Harlem. It is named after and arises from Madison Square, which is itself named after James Madison, the fourth President of the United States.
The Flatiron Building, originally the Fuller Building, is a 22-story, 285-foot-tall (86.9 m) steel-framed triangular building at 175 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, and sometimes called, in its early days, "Burnham's Folly", it was opened in 1902. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street—where the building's 87-foot (27 m) back end is located—with East 23rd Street grazing the triangle's northern (uptown) peak. The name "Flatiron" derives from its triangular shape, which recalls that of a cast-iron clothes iron.
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, the headquarters of the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, and Rockefeller Center, as well as several prominent tourist destinations including Broadway, Times Square, and Koreatown. Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.
Kips Bay, or Kip's Bay, is a neighborhood on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by 34th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 23rd Street to the south, and Third Avenue to the west.
23rd Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan, one of the major two-way, east-west streets in the borough's grid. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided into its east and west sections at Fifth Avenue. The street runs from Avenue C and FDR Drive in the east to Eleventh Avenue in the west.
The Metropolitan Life North Building, now known as Eleven Madison, is a 30-story Art Deco skyscraper adjacent to Madison Square Park at 11–25 Madison Avenue in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The building is bordered by East 24th Street, Madison Avenue, East 25th Street and Park Avenue South, and was formerly connected by a sky bridge and tunnel to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower just south of it.
Gramercy Park is the name of both a small, fenced-in private park, and the surrounding neighborhood that is also referred to as Gramercy, in Manhattan in New York City.
Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, fourth President of the United States. The focus of the square is Madison Square Park, a 6.2-acre (2.5-hectare) public park, which is bounded on the east by Madison Avenue ; on the south by 23rd Street; on the north by 26th Street; and on the west by Fifth Avenue and Broadway as they cross.
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower is a skyscraper occupying a full block in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City. The building is composed of two sections: a 700-foot-tall (210 m) tower at the northwest corner of the block, at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, and a shorter east wing occupying the remainder of the block bounded by Madison Avenue, Park Avenue South, 23rd Street, and 24th Street. The South Building, along with the North Building directly across 24th Street, comprises the Metropolitan Home Office Complex, which originally served as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Manhattan Community Board 5 is a New York City community board, part of the local government apparatus of the city, with the responsibility for the neighborhoods of Midtown, Times Square, most of the Theater District, the Diamond District, the Garment District, Herald Square, Koreatown, NoMad, Murray Hill and the Flatiron District, all in the borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by 59th Street on the north, Eighth Avenue, 26th Street, the Avenue of the Americas on the west, 14th Street on the south, and Lexington Avenue on the east, excluding the area from 34th to 40th Streets between Madison and Lexington Avenues, and the area from 20th to 22nd Streets between Park Avenue South and Lexington Avenue/Irving Place.
23rd Street station is a station on the PATH system. Located at the intersection of 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it is served by the Hoboken–33rd Street and Journal Square–33rd Street lines on weekdays, and by the Journal Square–33rd Street line on weekends.
Community boards of Manhattan are New York City community boards in the borough of Manhattan, which are the appointed advisory groups of the community districts that advise on land use and zoning, participate in the city budget process, and address service delivery in their district.
Stuyvesant Square is the name of both a park and its surrounding neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park is located between 15th Street, 17th Street, Rutherford Place, and Nathan D. Perlman Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence.
Rose Hill is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, between the neighborhoods of Murray Hill to the north and Gramercy Park to the south, Kips Bay to the east, the Flatiron District to the southwest, and NoMad to the northwest. The formerly unnamed area is sometimes considered to be a part of NoMad, because the name "Rose Hill" was chiefly used for the area in the 18th and 19th centuries, and is not very commonly used to refer to the area in the 2010s.
The Madison Square North Historic District is in Manhattan, New York City, and was created on June 26, 2001, by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.
NoMad, also known as Madison Square North, is a neighborhood centered on the Madison Square North Historic District in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.
One Madison is a luxury residential condominium tower located on 23rd Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South, at the southern end of Madison Avenue, across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, New York City. The building's official address and main lobby entrance is at 23 East 22nd Street, rather than at 1 Madison Avenue; there is no public entrance on 23rd Street.
Midtown South is a macro-neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, generally characterized as constituting the southern portion of Midtown Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan hosts over 700,000 daily employees as a busy hub for workers, residents, and tourists. The Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, Pennsylvania Station, Madison Square Garden, the Macy's Herald Square flagship store, Koreatown, and NYU Langone Medical Center are all located in Midtown South.
121 East 22nd is a building in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Developed by American company Toll Brothers, it is the first building in New York City designed by Rem Koolhaas's architectural firm OMA.
Notes
The boundaries of the Flatiron can be a subject of disagreement, but the district generally runs from the Avenue of the Americas to Park Avenue South between 14th and 23rd Streets, excluding the blocks adjacent to Union Square. Still, as often happens when a neighborhood becomes popular, some see its borders as expanded. The Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership...places the northern boundary in the upper 20s, an area some call NoMad, or North of Madison Square Park.