flatiron colonel winfield scott proskey

[Fiona Shnapple]

Alexiou's book is populated by a colorful collection of characters,
some of them little-known: the feisty Colonel Winfield Scott Proskey,
who refused to budge from his flat at the Cumberland Hotel, the
property waiting to be demolished before work could commence on the
Flatiron . . . publisher Frank Munsey, one of the first tenants at the
Flatiron, who became the father of the dime pulp magazine . . . the
corrupt construction union president Sam Parks, who led a Labor Day
parade on a white horse while awaiting incarceration at Sing Sing
Prison . . Louis Mitchell, a Harlem musician who helped introduce jazz
to Paris in the 1920s and whose quintet debuted at Taverne Louis, the
short-lived restaurant in the Flatiron Building basement.

But it is Harry Black, the charming and ruthless son-in-law of George
Fuller, whose construction company built the Flatiron, who dominates
the book. When Fuller died in December 1900, Black took over the
company. When the structure was completed, he called it the Fuller
Building, a name that had the shelf life of an ice cube on a griddle.

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