Hess triangle

Triangle detail
Location of the triangle, outside the Village Cigars shop and the Christopher Street station of the New York City Subway. The triangle can be seen on the sidewalk toward the left side of the photo.

The Hess triangle is a triangular tile mosaic set in a sidewalk in New York City's West Village neighborhood at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street. The plaque reads "Property of the Hess Estate which has never been dedicated for public purposes."[1] The plaque is an isosceles triangle, with a 25 1⁄2-inch (65 cm) base and 27 1⁄2-inch (70 cm) legs (sides).[1]

The plaque is the result of a dispute between the city government and the estate of David Hess, a landlord from Philadelphia who owned the Voorhis, a five-story apartment building.[2] In the 1910s the city claimed eminent domain to expropriate and demolish hundreds of buildings in the area in order to widen Seventh Avenue and expand the IRT subway.[1][3] According to Ross Duff Wyttock, writing in the Hartford Courant in 1928, Hess's heirs discovered that, when the city seized the Voorhis, the survey had missed this small corner of the plot and they set up a notice of possession.[1] The city asked the family to donate the diminutive property to the public, but they chose to holdout and installed the present, defiant mosaic on July 27, 1922.[4][5]

In 1938 the property, reported to be the smallest plot in New York City, was sold to the adjacent Village Cigars store for US$1,000 (equivalent to $17,385 in 2017), approximately $2 per square inch.[2][5] The new owners left the plaque in place and, as of 2018, it remains.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Kim, Betsy (August 4–10, 2011). "Tiles Underfoot Recall Owner Who Put His Foot Down". The Villager. 81 (10). NYC Community Media. Retrieved September 13, 2014.
  2. 1 2 McKinley, Jesse (April 16, 1995). "F.Y.I." The New York Times. Retrieved September 13, 2014.
  3. ↑ Carlson, Jen (April 9, 2015). "The Story Behind Hess Triangle, Once The Littlest Piece Of Land In NYC". Gothamist. Archived from the original on April 9, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Hess Triangle". RoadsideAmerica.com. Retrieved September 13, 2014.
  5. 1 2 Carlson, Jen (November 1, 2010). "Hess's Old Teeny Tiny Message to City". Gothamist. Archived from the original on June 14, 2016. Retrieved September 13, 2014.
  6. ↑ Plitt, Amy (July 17, 2017). "In the West Village, a remnant of NYC's onetime smallest plot of land remains". Curbed. Retrieved December 2, 2017.

Coordinates: 40°44′01″N 74°00′11″W / 40.733513°N 74.003067°W / 40.733513; -74.003067

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