FLAT IRON BUILDING
Madison Square
MAY 18, 1938. ABBOTT FILE 299

Flatiron Building, 1930-33

The Fuller Building, nicknamed Flatiron for its triangular shape, was built in 1902 at the scissorlike intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Its unusual shape and central location made it instantly famous, at first derided as an ill-shapen symbol of commercial greed and later extolled as an exhilarating symbol of modernity.

Abbott photographed the Flatiron Building between 1930 and 1933 and again in 1938. The first photograph, taken from the top floor of a six-story commercial building on 25th Street, is conventional. Like the many postcard views of the site, Abbott showed the full height of the building in context, featuring its six-foot wide point and the bustling traffic around Madison Square. The second photograph was more innovative. Standing in traffic, she pointed the camera up, transforming the foreshortened building into an arrow in space, soaring above its neighbors.

A modern high-rise at the corner of Broadway and 23rd Street has blunted the Flatiron's impact from afar. A 1991 cleaning exposed its white limestone surface from under layers of soot. City buses have replaced the trolleys and Fifth Avenue double-deckers, and a pedestrian island now occupies the spot where Abbott dodged traffic to make her 1938 view.

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