Word: flatirons
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Thus it's not at all surprising that one of Mailer's sharpest criticisms of Kate Millett is that "she has a mind like a flatiron, which is to say a totally masculine mind." He reacts against Millett and her feminist tome, Sexual Politics, on an immediate, instinctual level, the way he might balk if a woman sauntered into an all-male sauna in which he was sweating and luxuriating. He seems to feel instinctively that Millett simply doesn't belong where she roams, that she's misguided and out of her ken. His bafflement over another liberationist, a female...
...exhibit shows a picture of the newly-completed Flatiron Building meekly poking its head out of downtown New York at the turn of the century- somewhat like a shy, prematurely tall sixth grader. A proud New York in 1903 might well have boasted of the Flatiron Building and the subjugation of business to beauty. Just a little myopic, we would...
Because even the Flatiron was largely determined by business considerations. It barely displays the tripartite divisions, and very clearly the building's owners, the Fuller Construction Company, wanted to squeeze as much business space as possible from the small triangular lot they owned...
...cousins of the Flatiron Building, like the new Trade Commission Building, sit like gigantic boxes on their square lots. They would never fit into any environment. The only reason the new ones are not totally ridiculous is that they take their place beside older, slightly smaller models of the same thing. Trans planted in any other city, they'd look like the Pru in Boston. For an experiment one day, look at Boston as you cross the Charles on the MTA, Cover the four or five skyscrapers with your hands and see how much closer to the land...
American business took over in its strongholds, the cities, and boards of directors were more interested in profit than beauty. The first skyscrapers, perhaps even the Flatiron, felt some kinship to public interest. After all, it was a tower in the great tradition, and its architect had decorated it a la greque. With the proliferation of towers, though, skyscrapers were no longer a symbol, except, for example, the Empire State Building, for its sheer height. They eventually could be constructed simply to provide...