Flatiron Building

This guide to the Flatiron Building in New York City opens with the doubts that greeted it during construction in 1901, when the triangular wedge designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham was mocked as too strange and too exposed, earning the nickname Burnham's Folly. It covers the New Yorkers who wagered on how far the wreckage would scatter when the wind finally brought it down, and the safety margin Burnham's engineers quietly built into the steel frame. Stand at the building's narrow prow on Twenty-third Street to feel what the skeptics were worried about.