Dust Storm, Fifth Avenue, 1906

Oil on canvas, 22 x 27 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, George A. Hearn Fund, 1921. (21.41.2). Photograph © 1983 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Flatiron Building, 2006

The winds that swirled around the foot of the Flatiron Building, on Twenty-third Street at Madison Square, were legendary in the early twentieth century. On dry summer days, the winds kicked up swirling clouds of dust. The winds also lifted up women's skirts, a site that encouraged loitering men, who were shooed away by police, which is one possible origin of the phrase "23 Skidoo." Today the stately edifice shows no signs of the inelegant associations of its past.