Skyscraper Museum Collection
Simple Innovation
The Flatiron Building (1903)
New York City
D.H. Burnham & Company (architect)
Not all green features are high-tech. In fact, early skyscrapers, like the Flatiron building, possessed far more energy efficiency than the sealed and climatized glass boxes of the post-War II era. They had to. Without air-conditioning to compensate for the sun's heat, architects had to rely on "passive cooling": plenty of windows that people could open and narrow floor plates to allow for cross-ventilation.
The Flatiron building, with its broad facade baked by the sun, has deeply inset windows to provide shading -- a commonsensical design feature lost when sheer-glass-curtain wall facades came into style in the 1950s. Today's high-tech green buildings accomplish the same shading effect with sophisticated fritted glass or metal sunshades.