Episode 26 of the Bowery Boys. It's the Flat Iron Building. Hey, it's the Bowery Boys.

Hey!

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Hi there and welcome to the Bowery Boys. My name is Greg Young. Tom is away this week.

Today I'm going to wax poetic about probably the most poetic building in New York City,

the Flat Iron Building, popular star of postcards and romantic photography and movies as you've

probably seen. The Flat Iron is a slender triangular shaped office building bordered by 22nd

street on the south and 23rd street on the north and creating its angled look from the

intersections of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Flat Iron actually has some very impressive

company in the neighborhood. It has Madison Square Park catty corner to it and it's only

a block away from the Met Life Tower and the gold tip New York Life Insurance Company building.

It's all very pretty around there. Anyway, you slice it. So coming up, I'll tell you a little bit

of the story of the Flat Iron Building and I'll dispel five myths about it that you may have

thought were true this whole time. Stay tuned.

So the Flat Iron Building was constructed actually in 1902. The first myth you may know about this

is the Flat Iron Building was given its name because of its resemblance to the shape of an iron

and it's in like ironing clothes. This is close but not exactly right because the block itself was

called the Flat Iron Block well before the building actually came into existence and before 1902,

it was primarily occupied by sort of nondescript two and three story buildings of which have been

lost to the myths of time. As we mentioned a few weeks ago in our Macy's podcast, this area from

14th to 23rd street was popularly called Lady's Mile and was primarily a high traffic shopping

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