The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally the Flatiron District can be said to be bound by 17th Street, Union Square and Greenwich Village to the south; the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) or Seventh Avenue and Chelsea to the west; 25th Street and NoMad to the north;  and Lexington Avenue/Irving Place, Gramercy Park to the east.

Broadway cuts through the middle of the district, and Madison Avenue begins at 23rd Street and runs north. At the north (uptown) end of the district is Madison Square Park, which was completely renovated in 2001. The Flatiron District encompasses within its boundaries the Ladies' Mile Historic District.

The designation "Flatiron District" for this area is of relatively recent vintage, dating from around 1985, and came about because of its increasingly residential character, and the influx of many restaurants into the area &emdash; real estate agents needed an appealing name to call the area in their ads. Before that, the area was primarily commercial, with numerous small clothing and toy manufacturers, and was sometimes called the Toy District. The Toy Center buildings at 23rd Street and Broadway date from this period, and the annual American International Toy Fair took place there beginning in 1903, except for 1945. When much of this business moved outside the U.S., the area began to be referred to as the Photo District because of the large number of photographers' studios and associated businesses located there, the photographers having come because of the relatively cheap rents.

As of the 2000s, many publishers have their offices in the district, as well as advertising agencies, and the number of internet and web-related start-up companies in the area caused it to be considered part of "Silicon Alley" , along with TriBeCa and SOHO, and today the Flatiron remains a dominant force technology and creative firms.

Notable buildings in the district include the Flatiron Building, one of the oldest of the original New York skyscrapers, and just to east at 1 Madison Avenue is the Met Life Tower, built in 1909 and the tallest building in the world until 1913, when the Woolworth Building was completed. It is now occupied by Credit Suisse since MetLife moved their headquarters to the Pan Am Building. The 700-foot (210 m) marble clock tower of this building dominates Madison Square and the park there.

Nearby, in the adjoinging NoMad neighborhood on Madison Avenue between 26th and 27th Streets, on the site of the old Madison Square Garden, is the New York Life Building, built in 1928 and designed by Cass Gilbert, with a square tower topped by a striking gilded pyramid.



Some text and images from List of Manhattan Neighborhoods at Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.