Of the many office-to-residential conversions currently taking place in Manhattan, perhaps none has generated as much interest as the Flatiron Building.
First of all, the 22-story tower is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. Prominently located at the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, it offers prospective residents the opportunity to live in a landmark neighborhood that now bears the building's name, the Flatiron District.
The building's narrow triangular shape also presents a certain mathematical challenge: How do you create graceful, livable apartments on floors without right angles? In other words, how do you square a triangle?
A hard hat tour of the Flatiron last week provided clues.
Workers streamed onto the site, smoothing plaster on the ceilings and attaching huge slabs of Vermont marble to what would become lavish master baths.
But all was quiet on the 12th floor, where interior designer Rebecca Robertson had just prepared a 3,900-square-foot, four-bedroom show apartment at the building's famed northern tip for potential buyers.
Filling the bow with its many windows is a 60-foot-long great room that includes a living area, a dining area and an open kitchen. A sitting area with bench seating fits into the curved end of the room, with windows facing Madison Square Park and Fifth Avenue.
Diagonal steel struts, original supports that help hold the thin structure upright during gusts of wind, pierce the ceiling. The supports were exposed, as were many structural columns throughout the building, a reminder that the Flatiron, designed by Daniel Burnham and completed in 1902, was one of New York's first steel-framed skyscrapers. Despite the building's extravagantly ornate Beaux-Arts-style facade, the model unit has something of a downtown loft vibe.
“These apartments will be among the most unique in the city,” said developer Daniel Brodsky, who stood in his stocking feet in the great room and left his shoes at the apartment's front door in deference to the apartment's new carpets and floors. His company, the Brodsky Organization, oversees condo conversions with Sorgente Group, a real estate development company, on behalf of an ownership group he joined after disagreements with a previous owner led to back-to-back auctions.
However, it wasn't easy for him and the rest of his team to find the floor plans for the building's 38 units.
Before Mr. Brodsky entered the scene, the owners, including GFP Real Estate and Sorgente Group, were reconsidering an earlier plan to convert the Flatiron into a high-end office building after its last tenant, Macmillan Publishers, moved out in 2019, leaving behind a warren of oddly shaped workspaces. The owners had begun gutting the interior and decided that the mechanical core, which would include elevators and fire escapes, would be located in the southern half of the building, which runs perpendicular to Fifth Avenue.
But the core was so large and blocky that it was difficult to figure out how the apartments could surround it, let alone how to fill them with normally proportioned spaces.
In the end, architectural designer William Sofield, founder and principal of Studio Sofield – whom Mr. Brodsky commissioned to design the Flatiron apartments and leisure spaces – found the solution. Mr. Sofield suggested lengthening and narrowing the core and rotating it so that it runs parallel to Broadway. This meant that rooms on the west side of the building, along Fifth Avenue, could be more or less rectilinear, and it also allowed for full-floor units.
Mr. Sofield brings back historical details and uses artifacts found in the basement and in vaults beneath the Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Spiral spindles were created from stair balustrades, which, after sandblasting, are used as legs for toilet bowls. Steampunk fittings from the old cauldrons will decorate the building's gymnasium.
The Flatiron's new entrance will be at its southwest corner at East 22nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and a wooden revolving door added in the building's early years will be reinstalled there after restoration by an Indiana craftsman. Hanging above the lobby – once a Western Union office – will be a huge chandelier that Mr. Sofield designed after falling in love with a street lamp he spotted in a historic photo showing part of Madison Square Park.
Sitting areas adjacent to the new lobby will eat up much of the Flatiron's ground-floor retail space, but Macmillan's old lobby, a barrel-vaulted space stretching from Broadway to Fifth Avenue, will become a cafe open to the public. A bank wanted to lease the retail space in the bow, but James Lansill, who oversees sales and marketing for the building for Corcoran Sunshine, said the team was looking for a “special” tenant.
Despite the best efforts in floorplanning the condos — which start at $11 million for a three-bedroom apartment and top out at $50 million for a five-bedroom apartment with a 21st-floor terrace — the units have their idiosyncrasies.
In the model unit, the master bedroom is curved on one side. A hall rotates diagonally. And while there are plenty of closets, one wonders what potential buyers of the multi-million dollar condos will think about the model unit's tiny, zigzag-shaped closet that ends in a sharp point.
Mr Lansill said there had been “significant interest, active negotiations, contracting and some signings”. About 20 percent of those who have expressed interest come from outside the United States, some from the immediate neighborhood, he added. Mr. Brodsky declined to reveal the cost of the renovation but said it was “very expensive.” The sale of all units is expected to generate proceeds of over $700 million.
All apartments are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2026. But long before that — and for the first time — the exterior will be illuminated at night, marking the moment the 123-year-old Flatiron sheds its office past and enters its condominium future.