8. Flatiron Corner

“American Cities in Pencil, III, New York: Fifth Avenue, Broadway and Twenty-third Street,” Everybody’s Magazine, May, 1904

The Flatirion Building, completed in 1903, the year before this drawing was published, remains a familiar site to New Yorkers. However, Bailey shows the hustle and bustle of “Flatiron Corner” with a very different context: horse-drawn carriages, trolleys, and fancily-dressed pedestrians on their way to and from the Ladies’ Mile shopping district.

Bailey made this drawing from the Fifth Avenue Hotel; note the balcony at the extreme right. The hotel, built 1859, was replaced a few years later by the International Toy Center, a building now better known as the home of Eataly.