An Irishman's Diary

COMPLETED in 1902 and derided at the time for its ungainly shape, the Flatiron Building has survived to become one of New York’s most loved and photographed landmarks.

Its frontal view is best enjoyed from Madison Square Park, where someone has thoughtfully provided seats and tables with free wifi for passersby. And stopping there to read the newspapers last week, I was struck by the sheer drama of the building, as it cuts into the heart of Manhattan.

The extension that protrudes from it at ground-floor level – currently an exhibition space – is called the “prow”. Which is very apt, because among the many images it evokes is the nose of a ship pushing into harbour: like one of the ships that landed millions of emigrants in New York down the centuries.

But the Flatiron name is from a more prosaic likeness. And I suppose the building does resemble a certain laundering implement, even if it’s not an isosceles triangle. The rear of the structure has a 90-degree corner on the Fifth Avenue side, so it might make hard work of a shirt. An older, more obscure name for both the building and its site was the “cowcatcher”. This was either because, in a relatively pastoral 19th-century Manhattan, cows from neighbouring farms used to wander in there.

Or, more likely, because “cowcatchers” were angular appendages on that era’s trains, to prevent derailment when they hit livestock.

In any case, the Flatiron name stuck. And so doing, it robbed the property’s developers of of posthumous fame. Their work was originally – and for long officially – called the Fuller Building, until even map-makers had to bow to the popular will.

Another obvious resemblance in the building’s shape, surely, is to a slice of cake. Or a slice of the cake, even, given its proximity to the infamous Tammany Hall, the old Democratic Party organisation that for so long took care of the city, while also taking care of its friends.

The cake-slice idea would not have been lost on them. In fact, before the site was privately developed, the New York state legislature had voted $3 million for its purchase by the city, a scheme only thwarted when a newspaper revealed that this was to be a pocket-lining exercise by Tammany. The key man in the organisation then, though soon to retire to a life of leisure in his native Ireland, was Richard “Boss” Croker.

AROUND the same time the Flatiron Building went up, incidentally, another Tammany veteran, also Irish-American, published a fascinating account of the organisation’s methods.

His name was George Washington Plunkitt and he was not – in the conventional sense – an educated man, a fact recognised by the verbatim recounting of his thoughts, which he delivered, via public lectures, in cheerfully ungrammatical English. He did, however, have a PhD in street-wisdom, even if one might question his sagacity in being so brazen about it.

A champion of moral relativism, Plunkitt thought himself upright, after a fashion. Thus he drew what was (in his own head) a clear line between “honest graft” – his kind – and “dishonest graft”. The keynote was his belief that a politician was perfectly entitled to benefit from the insider knowledge his profession gave him. In Plunkitt’s case, such knowledge had led to great wealth. But then, as he saw it, why else would a man devote his life to politics? Among the things he boasted of was his ability to buy unwanted land where he knew a development was planned and later sell it on at big profit. He summed up his achievements in this sphere with a characteristic line: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em”. Far from apologising for this, he suggested the phrase could be adapted to the third person and used as his epitaph.

It followed that he had no objection to corporate donations. On the contrary, he likened his party machine’s activities to those of churches. Therefore: “If a corporation sends in a cheque to help the good work [. . .] why shouldn’t we take it like the other missionary societies?” And indeed, there was a strong element of charity involved: setting up newly arrived immigrants with work and living quarters, and generally helping the poor, whose gratitude could be counted on in a life-time of votes.

A vital part of Plunkitt’s mission was placing party loyalists – “patriots”, as he called them – in civil service jobs. He cited the case of one lost soul who, denied such a job because of reform laws, became an “anarchist”. Working assiduously to prevent similar tragedies, Plunkitt had developed a skill whereby he claimed he could “smell” a vacant position even before the incumbent knew he was leaving it.

Plunkitt was one of a dying breed, at least in New York. When he published his Machiavellian masterpiece, he had just lost an election and would not win another. Tammany itself was to be ousted from power in the 1930s. Thereafter, despite occasional revivals, New York surrendered its pre-eminence in political corruption to other US cities: and one in particular, where attempts at reform continue.

The morning I stopped by the Flatiron Building, the newspapers all carried pictures of former Illinois state governor Rod Blagojevich. The day before, he had chatted with reporters outside his Chicago home, speaking of his high hopes for the future. Later he posed for more photographs in a restaurant, his Kennedy-esque hair and smile suggesting unshakeable self-confidence.

He might have been campaigning for the White House. In fact, he was on his way to jail, where later that day he began a 14-year sentence for corruption charges, including an attempt to sell the vacated senate seat of President Obama. Even George Washington Plunkitt would have drawn the line at that.