"Alexiou – a native New Yorker and the granddaughter of a man who for a time owned the Flatiron Building in partnership with Harry Helmsley – has written an engaging and informative account of the building's construction and its lasting place in New York's lore." –The Washington Post
"Alice Sparberg Alexiou's
The Flatiron joins such books as Jill Jonnes's
Conquering Gotham (2007), about Pennsylvania Station, and Gail Fenske's
The Skyscraper and the City (2008), about the Woolworth Building, in a budding genre that we might call biographies of buildings." –
The Wall Street Journal "Though she ends on a note of permanence, as the landmarked and restored Flatiron is here to stay, Ms. Alexiou's book is ultimately about the never-ending change that rushes by in the city, and, in evoking that, she succeeds." –
The New York Observer "The first history book about The Flatiron, one of New York City's first skyscrapers, built in 1902, and still a favorite sightseeing stop for tourists." –
Deseret News "[Alice Sparberg-Alexiou] brings the building alive by profiling not only its owners and tenants but also the city's mixed reaction to it." –
The Christian Science Monitor "Alice Sparberg Alexiou elucidates the complex web of human relationships built around the Flatiron, bringing life to the poignant and tragic story of the skyscraper, its creators, denizens, and critics in New York 1900–a rich and contentious setting shaped not only by buildings, streets, and squares, and the popular arts of music, theater, and film, but also by unbridled speculation, gambling, corruption, conflict, and intrigue." –
Gail Fenske, author of The Skyscraper and the City
