Flatiron

by Maddie DePuy

And there are times when I get on the Q train or the R train or the W train and I end up in your favorite part of the city. I don’t realize it until I’m walking around but then I understand why you love Flatiron, it feels like you. In places it is sleek and almost elegant, urban and effortless and everyone has good hair. The avenues have little streets nestled in between them, these worldly shops with beautiful things and cafés that are full of long conversations which are your only and favorite type of conversation. The streets fit as much as they can between their hours, you do that too. Broadway slants through the whole thing, just the way you fall, at an angle, pressed against walls on a diagonal. You and Flatiron are both unapologetic, you don’t boast your significance to Manhattan but the city still bends to you somehow. Below Midtown, above the Village. In-between the pulsing skyscrapers of 34th street and the relaxed walk-ups of 14th, in the 20s the architecture is you: modern, vintage, new, classic, a relic and an invention all at once.