23 Skidoo and the Flatiron Building: The Skirt-Blowing Myth That's 3 Years Too Late

The Real Spectacle

The legend does not collapse entirely. The Flatiron Building's wedge shape and the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street created a wind vortex that could lift skirts. Men gathered to watch. Police shooed them away. That part belongs to New York's street history, not just to a tall tale. The scene was repeated enough to become a known nuisance and a known joke.

It also made it onto film. A 1901 nickelodeon short showed the skirt-blowing phenomenon on 23rd Street, a year before the Flatiron Building opened. The movie-going public could see the gag before the building became the backdrop of the slang story. The visual was already a city attraction: women caught in a gust, onlookers gawking, officers moving the crowd along. The film proves the spectacle did not need the slang to be funny or newsworthy.

The Three-Year Problem

The slang origin is where the story breaks. "23" as a way to say "get lost" is documented in print in 1899. The Flatiron Building opened in 1902. That means the phrase existed three years before the building that supposedly coined it. The building did not birth "23 skidoo", it inherited a phrase already in circulation and gave it a dramatic, windblown stage.

That reversal is what makes the real history stranger. The myth works because it fuses two real things: a distinctive building and a real street spectacle. But the chronology refuses the cozy origin story. The film, the wind, and the gawkers are documented. The building-as-word-origin is not. The legend turns a coincidence of address, 23rd Street, into a cause. It is a retrofitted story, and New York has always been good at those.

Seeing It Without the Myth

The Flatiron Building is private, so there is no observation deck and no interior tour. The view is from the street. The public space around the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street provides the classic angle. Madison Square Park, just north, offers a calmer look at the wedge from across the lawn.

Weekday mornings before 9 a.m. and evenings after 7 p.m. are generally less crowded. For the wind-vortex legend, a breezy day is the obvious time to visit, though the building's funnel effect is weather-dependent. Stand on the public sidewalk, not in the roadway, and keep an eye on traffic. Subway stops at 23rd Street put the intersection within a short walk.

A bookable small-group Flatiron and 23rd Street history walk covers the building's wind-tunnel reputation and the nickelodeon era, from $30 (estimated). Check traveler reviews on the activity page before choosing a time. Afterward, the High LineThe High LineThe elevated park built on an abandoned freight rail line, threading through Chelsea from Gansevoort Street to Hudson Yards. has a 23rd Street entrance for an elevated walk, and Grand Central TerminalGrand Central TerminalThe 1913 Beaux-Arts rail terminal with the turquoise zodiac ceiling, whispering gallery and oyster bar. is a short subway ride away if the day calls for more old New York.

More on the place itself: high line.