Hess Triangle

You are standing before the Hess Triangle, a small mosaic embedded directly into the sidewalk at the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Christopher Street. This patch of ground covers about five hundred square inches and remains one of the most stubborn acts of resistance in New York City history. In the nineteen tens, the city government condemned hundreds of buildings to clear a path for the extension of Seventh Avenue and the local subway line. Among the demolished structures was a five-story apartment building called the Voorhis, which belonged to a landlord named David Hess.