Some units in contract as owner cites desirability of location near Madison Square Park
New York City’s Flatiron Building, the triangular Beaux-Arts landmark at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, will begin opening to residents later this fall after a roughly seven-year renovation that converted the 124-year-old commercial property into 36 luxury apartments.
The project is led by the Brodsky Organization, which owns the building. Managing partner Daniel Brodsky told the Financial Times that developing a landmark property carries “always hesitation” alongside the advantage of its “incredibly special character” that makes the work worthwhile.
The flagship apartment, which occupies the entirety of the top floor, is in contract for $58.5 million, according to Corcoran’s website. The unit’s floorplan includes five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a sauna, two dressing rooms, a dining room, a breakfast room, and a 72-foot “great room.” The buyer’s identity has not been disclosed.
Fourteen of the 36 units are already in contract, Corcoran’s website shows. The lowest-price unit, a three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment on the third floor, is among those in contract, according to the listing. That unit includes an open-plan kitchen and “great room” plus two dressing rooms.
The building was designed by architect Daniel Burnham and originally called the Fuller Building. It was named Flatiron because its triangular footprint from above resembles a clothes iron, although pedants have noted that the actual floorplan is a scalene triangle rather than an isosceles shape typical of a flatiron.
The interior was reimagined by a New York design firm that stripped back the walls to expose sections of the building’s “steel skeleton” — the internal steel frame that was cutting-edge technology at the time. Images released by the building show a four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment with a curved sofa positioned in the building’s “prow,” the sharpest angle of the triangular structure, with marble bathrooms and brushed steel kitchen finishes.
The exterior renovation focused on the building’s terra-cotta and limestone façade, which features sculpted lion heads and eagles. A specialist was employed to replicate and restore “thousands of terra-cotta pieces from the facade, reinstalling each by hand,” the BBC reported.
The Flatiron was one of New York’s tallest buildings when completed in 1902, but it was not universally admired at the time. Critics feared the narrow building would topple over. The building’s shape also created a powerful localized wind current, known as the “Flatiron breeze,” which author Alice Alexiou wrote “blew total strangers into each other’s arms, causing much embarrassment.” According to Alexiou’s history of the building, a 14-year-old messenger boy named John McTaggert was blown into the middle of Fifth Avenue by the wind, where he was struck by a car and died.
Despite those concerns, Alexiou wrote that “during a 60-mile-an-hour windstorm that battered the city one morning soon after the first tenants moved in, you couldn’t feel the slightest vibration in the building.”
Brodsky told the Financial Times that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had spent more than $100 million buying several properties three blocks north of the Flatiron, and described the neighborhood around Madison Square Park as attractive for the wealthy. “There’s a group of wealthy people who want to be in a convenient place; good transportation, the best restaurants in the city, the park … it’s a very easy place to live,” Brodsky said. “You’re surrounded by coolness.”
Fourteen of the 36 apartments are in contract, including the $58.5 million penthouse and the lowest-price unit, a three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment on the third floor. Brodsky attributed the interest in part to the building’s location near Madison Square Park, telling the Financial Times that the neighborhood offers good transportation, restaurants, and the park, making it “a very easy place to live.”