The Flatiron Dream

I was walking to home depot to buy a forstner bit to chop out interior structure in a reception desk high up in a new brutalist tower on broadway. The former president was being arraigned in a nearby Manhattan courtroom. It was the first warm bright day of spring and ecstatic energies surged through the lunchtime crowd in Madison Square Park; dozens of strollers were corralled on the lawn, toddlers wandered in the tulips; the sun poured down like hot wax; clothes were shed; pale green foamed from the tree branches; sex was in the air. Life, whether you liked it or not, was happening. A large crowd sat on the long triangle of astro turf in front of the Flatiron building; this crowd was all facing the building as if it were giving a performance. The building itself was shrouded in scaffolding and netting. An auction to sell the Flatiron had failed the week before; the first bidder, after falling to his knees and crying that this was his “life-long dream!” could not make the down payment. The second bidder backed out, feeling that the dream was not worth $189.5 million. But the Flatiron dream is free for anyone on the street with a camera and a prayer. Having appeared in art, film and TV from time immemorial it now produces great shreds of dream that sluff off and overcome the crowds on 23rd and Broadway. There was a kind of euphoria on the street level; a spiritual surrender; all these crowds moving in and out of the dream; you could see people shudder as they looked up and recognized it; the dominating fantasy of TV architecture blocking out the sun like the prow of a derelict space craft. For those who looked up anyhow; I’ve walked by the Flatiron a dozen times this year and hadn’t looked up until now; the netting gave it a gothic mood, as if it were black crepe hiding some terrible wound. Meanwhile, little did anyone know that the building was empty, only the ground floor retail occupied. The rest of the floors remained gutted and dormant; it is mere façade, a relic for the believers.

The Flatiron (x 3), 1904, Edward Steichen