Christmas in the City is Department 56's love letter to New York. Brownstones with wreaths on every door, carolers under the streetlights, a corner grocer stacking oranges in the cold. Most of its buildings are the kind of place you feel sure you have walked past, even if you could never say exactly where.
And then a few pieces carry something extra. The Flatiron Building is somewhere you could go and stand in front of tomorrow, on a real corner in Manhattan, with the traffic streaming past on both sides.
Those are our favourites to build around. When a display is anchored on a real place, the whole scene has something to say. So here is how we would build a New York street around the Flatiron.
Start with the Flatiron
Department 56 has made plenty of city buildings, but only one Flatiron. It stands about fourteen inches tall in hand-painted porcelain, lit from inside by two bulbs, with the sculpted columns, the handsome cornice and the little red awnings at street level all in place. It even arrives dressed for the season, with removable wreaths and garland.
Here is the part we love most. The company's own designers have said that their skyscrapers are usually a blend, a few real buildings combined and trimmed to fit the shelf. Not this one. The Flatiron kept its famous three-sided shape, because the shape is the whole point. Set it down and you can walk around it like a New Yorker circling the block.
Collectors had four years to get one. It was introduced in December 2006 and retired in December 2010, and it has been one of the most sought-after pieces in Christmas in the City ever since.
A quick history of the real building
This part is worth knowing, because almost none of it is what people expect.
Start with the name. Officially, it has never been the Flatiron Building at all. It went up in 1902 as the Fuller Building, headquarters of the construction company that built it. But the triangular block it stands on, where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, had been nicknamed the Flat Iron for years before a single beam was raised, because the lot is shaped exactly like a clothes iron. New Yorkers simply kept calling it that, the name stuck to the new building, and today the whole neighbourhood is the Flatiron District. The building is named after its lot, and the district is named after the building.
The architect was Daniel Burnham of Chicago, and his tower went up in about a year: a steel skeleton first, then a skin of limestone and glazed terracotta arranged like a classical column, with a base, a shaft and a crown. At the time, plenty of New Yorkers were convinced it would blow over. Something that tall and that thin, standing alone in the wind? People reportedly took bets on how far the pieces would land. The engineers had the last word. The frame was built to handle four times the strongest wind the corner could throw at it, and it has stood for more than 120 years.
The wind found other entertainment. The building's shape funnels gusts down to the sidewalk, and the corner became famous for sending hats flying and lifting hemlines, to the point that crowds would gather just to watch, and policemen would move them along. New Yorkers will tell you the phrase 23 skidoo was born right there on 23rd Street. The truth is that both words are older than the building, but the story attached itself to the Flatiron anyway. Good stories always know the best address.
And as it happens, Department 56 made a figure of exactly this moment: a young couple hurrying along the sidewalk while a gust turns their umbrella inside out. It was made from 2006 to 2008, the very years the Flatiron piece was on shelves, and there is only one place it could possibly stand in your display. Put the couple at the foot of the building, right at the point, and your village gets its own Flatiron breeze.
The most photographed corner in New York
From the day it opened, nobody could stop looking at it. Because the point faces you as you look up Fifth Avenue, the building seems to be coming toward you, and everyone reached for the same idea: a ship. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz caught it in the winter of 1903, from Madison Square under fresh snow, and later wrote that it looked "as if it were moving toward me like the bow of a monster ocean steamer." He called his photograph "a picture of the new America which was in the making."
H.G. Wells stood on the same corner in 1906 and confessed he was left agape, watching the prow of the Flatiron "ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the afternoon light." When the city made it a landmark in 1966, the official report noted that writers had compared it to a great ship sailing up the avenue. Sixty years of visitors, one shared image. Your display shelf gets the same trick for free: point the prow outward and the whole scene starts moving.
The inside is just as much fun. At the point, the building is only about six and a half feet wide, and the wedge-shaped offices at the tip were the most coveted in the house, with windows looking out on three sides at once. For sixty years those offices were full of books: St. Martin's Press moved in during 1959, and eventually the publisher Macmillan filled every floor, so a whole generation of novels was edited inside the triangle. The original birdcage elevators ran on water pressure until 1997. And the tiny one-storey glass shop wrapped around the very point was nicknamed the cowcatcher, added at the owner's insistence to squeeze one more shop out of the lot. Burnham objected. The shop went in anyway. New York has always been New York.
Give it an intersection
The Flatiron's whole story is where two roads meet, so build exactly that: two streets crossing, with the triangle commanding the corner. Then give the crossing some company.
A clock tower is what every city corner wants: a reason for people to say "meet me under the clock." Set it across the intersection from the Flatiron and the two tall pieces frame the crossing between them. Department 56 made this one for a single year, 2011, so it is a nice find in its own right.
A church earns its place here for a lovely historical reason. In 1902, New York's church steeples had only just been overtaken by steel-framed towers as the tallest things on the skyline. Put a stone church with a proud steeple a street away from the Flatiron and your display quietly tells that story: the old city and the new one, sharing the same snow.
Shops for both avenues
A triangular building gives you two street fronts to dress instead of one, which is the fun of it. Line both avenues with the kind of shops that make a city block feel lived in.
The Corner Grocer is one of the early pieces in the series, made from 1988 to 1992, and it does exactly what its name promises. Every neighbourhood in New York runs on a grocer like this one. Give it the corner diagonally opposite the Flatiron and both of your streets get an anchor at each end.
Then a jeweler, because it is December in this city and somebody on that sidewalk is shopping for something small and sparkling. A lit shop window full of treasure is one of the great pleasures of a night scene.
And a coffee house, for the same reason cities have them on every block: everyone out in that cold needs somewhere warm to duck into. Tuck it mid-block where a real one would be, between the landmarks, doing quiet and steady business.
Fill the sidewalks
Buildings make the skyline. People make the city. A few figures turn your intersection from an architectural model into eight o'clock on a December evening.
A street vendor belongs at the busiest corner in town, which is now the foot of your Flatiron. This one was made for a single year, and he gives the sidewalk what it needs most: somebody selling something.
An organ grinder is turn-of-the-century New York in a single figure, and he is exactly who would have been working that corner in 1902, playing to the crowd that came to gawk at the brand-new skyscraper. He ran for just three years, 1989 to 1991, so he is an early piece too.
Then carolers, because this is a Christmas village after all. Department 56 kept this set going for seven years, which tells you how many collectors agreed. Put them under the clock tower, mid-song.
And finally a couple dressed for an evening out. Every city scene wants one pair of people who are clearly going somewhere wonderful. Aim them along the avenue, past the jeweler's window, and let everyone who sees your display wonder where they are headed.
Setting it all up
Four tips, starting with the one that makes the biggest difference.
- Give it a corner, not a row. The Flatiron was born where two roads cross. Run two streets through your display and let the triangle command the intersection. Lining it up in a straight row hides the best thing about it.
- Point the prow at the room. Stieglitz, Wells and half of New York all saw a ship steaming toward them. Face the narrow point at your viewers and your display does the same thing to everyone who walks in.
- Keep the point clear. The real corner is open sidewalk and sky. Leave the pavement in front of the prow empty and the building looks even taller.
- Let it be the tallest thing on the table. In 1902 it towered over everything around it, and that is the feeling to recreate. Keep your other buildings lower and the Flatiron does the rest.
And do not worry about getting it perfect the first time. Half the fun is shifting everything around next year and finding a better arrangement.
One last thought
The real Flatiron has spent 124 years being offices, and it is just now becoming something new. The building is being turned into homes, and for the first time in its whole history, people are moving in. The most photographed office building in New York is quietly turning into a place where somebody hangs a wreath on the door and puts a light in the window.
Which is to say: the Flatiron is becoming a village piece in real life. We find that completely delightful.
Your version is ahead of schedule. It has had warm light in the windows and wreaths on the front from the very beginning, with a whole city block of neighbours to keep it company. And there is always room at the intersection for one more shop, one more streetlight, one more pair of carolers next year.
Browse the Vintage Christmas in the City collection at Vintage Villages →
Free shipping across Canada. Got a question about a piece, or want to know what else would look good beside the Flatiron? Email us at info@vintagevillages.ca. We love talking about this stuff.
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