World's Largest Iron

A flat iron taller than a person stands on the corner of Wall Street and Battery Park Avenue in downtown Asheville, and in 2025 828 News NOW noted that no plaque explains why.

The sculpture was designed by Asheville sculptor Reed Todd and installed in 1997, seventy-one years after the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building across the street was erected in 1926. Mountain Xpress reported in 2009 that it was modelled on the irons used at the turn-of-the-century Asheville Laundry. In 2025, 828 News NOW described it as a 6-foot-wide, 8-foot-tall piece of steel built with a donated budget of $6,500, and argued that the choice of subject was no coincidence given the similar names and shapes of iron and building. The Public Art Archive lists it in the Asheville Public Art Collection under the title Flat Iron Architecture.