Few out­side New York know the Flat­iron Build­ing by name, but peo­ple every­where asso­ciate it with the city. That owes in part to its ten­den­cy to appear in the vin­tage imagery of New York that adorns the walls of cafés, hotel rooms, and den­tists’ offices across the world. And that, in turn, owes in part — in very large part — to the Flatiron’s unusu­al shape, the result of a design meant to max­i­mize the prof­it of a tri­an­gu­lar plot of land bound­ed by Fifth Avenue, Broad­way, and East 22nd Street. You can hear the sto­ry of the build­ing, “New York’s strangest tow­er,” in the new video from archi­tec­ture-and-engi­neer­ing Youtube chan­nel The B1M just above.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured The B1M here on Open Cul­ture for videos on sub­jects like Europe’s lack of sky­scrap­ers — a con­di­tion that cer­tain­ly does­n’t afflict Man­hat­tan, though at the time of the Flat­iron Build­ing’s con­struc­tion in the first years of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the sky­scraper itself was still a fair­ly nov­el con­cept.

Laws gov­ern­ing con­struc­tion changed to keep up with devel­op­ments in the tech­nolo­gies of con­struc­tion: “Fol­low­ing a recent change in the city’s fire codes,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, “this became one of the ear­li­est build­ings in New York to shun load-bear­ing mason­ry and instead take advan­tage of steel for its struc­tur­al frame.”

The Flatiron’s archi­tects were Fred­er­ick P. Dinkel­berg and Daniel Burn­ham, the lat­ter of whom is now remem­bered as the orig­i­nal king of the Amer­i­can sky­scraper. In fact, the very term “sky­scraper” was coined in response to the Mon­tauk Block, a high-rise he designed in Chica­go. But while the Mon­tauk Block stood only between 1883 and 1902, the Flat­iron con­tin­ues to stand proud — if, at 22 sto­ries, no longer rel­a­tive­ly tall — on the three-cor­nered plot where it first arose 120 years ago.  Alas, it has also “sat emp­ty since 2019, when its last ten­ants, Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ers, moved out.” After that began a series of ren­o­va­tions, and after that began “mul­ti­ple dis­agree­ments among the build­ing’s cur­rent own­ers and future ten­ants,” which cul­mi­nat­ed in a court-ordered auc­tion of the build­ing won by a bid­der who sub­se­quent­ly van­ished. But how­ev­er deep the Flat­iron plunges into legal lim­bo, its sta­tus as a New York icon will sure­ly remain intact.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

An Archi­tect Demys­ti­fies the Art Deco Design of the Icon­ic Chrysler Build­ing (1930)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Ask any­one who’s trav­eled to the Great Pyra­mids of Giza: no mat­ter how many times you’ve seen them in pho­tographs or on tele­vi­sion, you’re nev­er real­ly pre­pared to come face-to-face with them in real life. But you can get fair­ly close to at least the appear­ance of real life by see­ing the Pyra­mids in 4k res­o­lu­tion, as they’re pre­sent­ed in the video above from trav­el, archi­tec­ture, and his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tion of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome atop the Flo­rence Cathe­dral). This isn’t just vaca­tion footage: Bra­vo tells the sto­ry of the Pyra­mids, puts them in con­text, and even incor­po­rates vir­tu­al re-cre­ations of what they would have looked like in their hey­day.

We know the Pyra­mids as icon­ic ruins, undoubt­ed­ly mighty but also seri­ous­ly dilap­i­dat­ed. When they were built in the 26th cen­tu­ry BC, they were cov­ered in white lime­stone exte­ri­or shells, giv­ing them the strik­ing­ly smooth if chro­mat­i­cal­ly reversed appear­ance of a 2001-style mono­lith — a char­ac­ter­is­tic that no doubt encour­ages cer­tain the­o­rists who imag­ine the con­struc­tion process as hav­ing been exe­cut­ed by beings from out­er space.

The tech­ni­cal­ly inclined Bra­vo pre­sum­ably has lit­tle time for such notions, fill­ing the video as he does with details about the archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing of the Pyra­mids, many of them thor­ough­ly human in nature, such as the delib­er­ate­ly con­fus­ing pas­sage­ways meant to throw off plun­der­ers.

Along with high-res­o­lu­tion footage and ren­der­ings of what the Pyra­mids looked like then and look like now, Bra­vo also includes his own on-foot explo­rations, show­ing us cor­ners of the com­plex (and one espe­cial­ly claus­tro­phobe-unfriend­ly tun­nel) that we don’t nor­mal­ly see unless we take a tour our­selves. This close-up per­spec­tive gives him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect the mod­ern human expe­ri­ence of these ancient mon­u­ments to their vast scale and his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tant con­cep­tion. To be awed and even over­whelmed is per­haps the most nat­ur­al response to the Pyra­mids, and for some, it’s worth the trip to expe­ri­ence that feel­ing alone. For oth­ers, answer­ing the ques­tion of exact­ly how and why they awe and over­whelm becomes the work of a life­time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Take a 360° Inter­ac­tive Tour Inside the Great Pyra­mid of Giza

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.