I have always had a fascination for the structure in the wedge of territory between Lafayette and Mulberry where they meet Bleecker. Right now the building comes to one of the sharpest corner points in the city at its apex; it looks like you could cut your finger on it. Beside the building on the Mulberry Street side there is an entrance to the IRT #6 subway.
I am afraid I don’t know much about the structure’s history, or when it was built. Today it is used as an advertising billboard or a surface for multiple billboards, like the Times Tower on West 42nd Street and 7th Avenue. However until a few years ago, it hosted a series of restaurants, such as Bite in 2017. I regret that I didn’t get in there. The smallest restaurant I have been in is the Square Diner, at Varick and Leonard.
Here are a pair of shots from the wedge building in the 1940s. Notice the still-extant IRT entrance kiosk, which the Original 28 IRT subway stations, including Bleecker, received in 1904 but were already being phased out at this time. A Shell station occupied the wedge. One photo shows a structure of some kind and lamps, which are absent from the other. I don’t see gas pumps in either photo, so it may have been service-only.
My guess is that the Shell service station survived until the 1960s, and the wedge structure went up in the 1970s or 1980s. The intersection was created when Lafayette Place was extended south in the early 1900s to meet the now-disappeared Marion Street, and the entire route became Lafayette Street, including a section of Elm Street further south.
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9/19/24