What the Flatiron District Is, for a Company Choosing an Office

Where the Flatiron District begins and ends

Our Flatiron hub draws the district roughly from Union Square up to Madison Square Park, between Sixth Avenue and Park Avenue South, with the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street as its center. Three office neighborhoods touch it: NoMad to the north, Chelsea across Sixth Avenue and Union Square at the southern end.

The edges are soft. Listings a few blocks past either park are often filed under Flatiron, and tenants treat Flatiron and Chelsea as close to a single market divided by one avenue. If a floor two blocks outside the line suits the team, the label should not rule it out.

Is Flatiron considered Midtown? Why the label changes how you read rents

No. Midtown proper starts around 34th Street. Flatiron belongs to Midtown South, and brokers and market reports quote the two separately because they price differently. A Midtown average says nothing useful about a Flatiron loft, and a Midtown South figure says little about a tower on Sixth Avenue.

So when a report or a landlord quotes a number, check which market it describes before you compare it with a floor here. Flatiron vs Midtown puts the two side by side with current figures.

The subway lines, and how staff get to a Flatiron office

• At 23rd Street, inside the district: the 6 and the N/Q/R/W, with the F/M over on Sixth Avenue.
• At Union Square, one stop or about ten minutes on foot to the south: the L and the 4/5/6, as well as the same N/Q/R/W.

Between them those lines put most of the city and the PATH trains within a single transfer. For an employer that is the practical meaning of the address: a candidate's commute is rarely the reason an offer falls through.

The office stock: prewar lofts, one company to a floor

These blocks were built for showrooms and the garment trade, which left tall ceilings, very large windows and corner buildings lit from two streets. Floors typically run 5,000 to 11,000 square feet, a size a single company can hold alone, and many buildings are boutique: a keyed elevator, windows that open, one tenant on each level.

The tenants are mostly venture-backed software companies, from small suites to full floors of a hundred people, along with the agencies and funds that work with them. Two cautions for a tour. Some of the smaller buildings run a single elevator cab, so ask. And the plates are not large, so a company that keeps growing eventually leaves for capacity. The Flatiron neighborhood guide covers daily life on these blocks.

What an office in the Flatiron District costs

The live block below shows what we list in Flatiron today, floor by floor with size and asking rent, and prints the district's median. Expect a wide spread. A plain prewar floor on a side street with a modest lobby and a penthouse with terraces and park views are both Flatiron, and they are priced as different products. Decide the most you will pay per square foot before touring, then tour inside that band.