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Soon after it was built, the Flatiron was called "a monstrosity, a disgrace to our city, an outrage to our sense of the artistic and a menace to life." The New-York Tribune simply called the new building "a stingy piece of pie.”

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Gradually, as doctors and insurance companies began to sound the alarm that not being able to button your pants was less a sign of success, and rather a one way ticket to an early death, being overweight fell out of favor and the clubs disbanded. 7/

An 1884 writeup from the New York Times describing the president of the Connecticut Fat Man's Club:
"He is huge, he is ponderous, his obesity borders on the infinite; and the most hardened lean man cannot gaze upon his magnificent proportions without being unconsciously made purer and holier." 6/

Groups like the Fat Men’s Association of New York, the Jolly Fat Men’s Club, and the United Association of the Heavy Men of New York State held elaborate annual events: weigh-ins, parades, banquets, and prizes for the heaviest man in attendance. The prize was often a whole roasted pig. 5/

“The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime… America was a great farting country.” —E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime 4/

Membership was seen not as a health risk, but as a mark of success.

These corpulent clubs of conspicuous consumption counted doctors, lawyers, politicians, and business leaders among their ranks. 3/

In the decades straddling the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, New York, and much of the country, was in the golden age of the Fat Men’s Club. These organizations had just one entry requirement: you had to weigh at least 200 pounds. 2/

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You found me! Thanks for the shout outs - so glad you like the record!

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Years later, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses negotiated with Rothstein’s estate to acquire the property in exchange for forgiving back taxes. The deal cost the city nothing. He used the swamp’s rich peat deposits, worth more than the taxes the city had waived, to landscape parks across New York. 10/

The airport scheme fizzled. Rothstein was gunned down in 1928 over gambling debts, and the city chose Floyd Bennett Field instead. The Phantom Village slowly rotted back into the swamp, eventually becoming a dumping ground for subway debris and rubble from the demolished Wallabout Market. 9/

To inflate the land’s value, Rothstein threw up 48 shoddy houses—empty shells without foundations, propped up by cheap lumber and pure grift. He hired watchmen “energetically assisted by a set of strong-jawed dogs” to patrol the property. The press dubbed it the “Phantom Village.” 8/