Ever wonder about all those people who line up at Danny Meyer's Shake Shack and wait an hour or more for a hamburger? You got me. Full disclosure: I've never tried a Shake Shack burger. I refuse to wait for an hour. But no hamburger could be that good. I attribute the hyperbolic success of this glorified food stand to Meyer's fabulous marketing machine. Oh, and did I mention location? Anything tastes better when you're eating it sitting in a beautiful park, gazing up at the Flatiron Building.

Here's the beautiful MetLife tower, at the northeast edge of Madison Square Park. The tower was modeled after the Venetian Campanile. I took this photo today from the 40th floor of a neighboring building, looking north. Notice how clear the view is to midtown, up to that cluster of skyscrapers.

Today I took this picture of 26 West 17th Street, one of the many gorgeous Beaux-arts decorated loft buildings that line the Flatiron District side streets. Here my grandfather had a celluloid button factory in the late 1930s and early '40s. In those days, the area was all light industry, and pretty grungy. Nobody then cared about all these old buildings--most were built between 1900 and 1910--that preservationists today salivate over. At that time, there was no landmarks commission. Owners could tear down properties on a whim. Nobody could stop them. Tell this to the stylish young'uns rushing through the streets after work, heading to the scene at the Ace Hotel bar. They'll look at you like you're crazy. But it's true, in those days New York didn't care about the old, period. New York was all about the new. Especially for people like my grandfather, one of the millions of immigrants who came to America in the early 20th century.

He set up his business in the '30s in this then-crummy old space, which he rented for next to nothing. His business was on the top floor, where the ventilation was better, because button-manufacturing involved toxic chemicals.

Flatiron Man

Here's one of the thirty-one life-size statues by British sculptor Antony Gormley that have recently been placed around Madison Square. The figures are based on the artist's own--talk about ego!--and they are all facing the Square. You have to look way up to see most of them, because they've been placed high, high up, perched on window ledges or standing on rooftops. But a few stand on solid ground, where pedestrians daily stop and look and comment, and take photos of themselves standing next to the figures.

This one stands right in front of the Flatiron Building, looking straight at it. I call him Flatiron Man.

So with this installation what is Gormley saying about himself? About New York? About the Flatiron Building? His statues will remain until mid-August, and I will miss them when they are gone.

Il bello Flatiron Building

Three years ago, an Italian company bought a small percentage of the Flatiron Building. Recently, they acquired more. They--the Sorgente Group--now own about half of the building. Thirty-year-old Veronica Mainetti heads the New York office of Sorgente, which was founded by her father, Valter Mainetti.

The Mainettis have an intensely personal attachment to New York: Veronica's great-grandfather, Luigi Binda, came to this city at the turn of the twentieth century, became an iron worker, helped build the New York Stock Exchange, and later, the Chrysler Building. In between he founded his own construction company in New Jersey, in 1928.

I met recently with Veronica Mainetti--we sat in Madison Square Park, with the Flatiron looming in the background--and she reminded me that New York is still the city where everybody wants to go. No other place, she said, has such energy, varied ethnicity, and possibilities. Mainetti comes from Rome, where her company is based, and we talk about what it is like to build and/or maintain properties in the Eternal City, with its impossibly complex layers of antiquity and bureaucracy, versus Here In New York, where we saw fit to enact a landmarks law only in the mid-sixties, but not before we'd destroyed so many wondrous buildings, the most famous example being the McKim Meade and White's Penn Station, which had been modeled after Rome's Baths of Caracalla.

I love that this Italian group now owns a piece of the building that New York adores. It feels so right. No question about it, just their presence will make the Flatiron more elegant. Because they have so much respect for the Flatiron, as much as for the ancient monuments that surround them in Rome. Mainetti recalls the first time she and her father walked past the Flatiron. They were awed, amazed, blown away.

They have plans devised by a cinematographer to illuminate the building at night, which they will soon present to Landmarks. What a sight that will be, the Flatiron blazing in the dark!

Daniel Hudson Burnham

Daniel Hudson Burnham
Originally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution

Daniel Burnham

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:45 PM, <alicesa10@aol.com> wrote:

The Flatiron Building was the work of the firm of Daniel H. Burnham, the Chicago architect who designed many of that city's first skyscrapers during the 1880s, and then went on to become a superstar, travelling the country and then the world, overseeing huge building projects. There is a documentary film in the works about Burnham that will premiere in September, 2009, in Chicago's Millenium Park. http://www.danielburnhamfilm.com/. Of course the Flatiron gets a mention.