Corner of Christopher and Bleeker St., N.Y.

Sketchy lines capture the buzzing atmosphere surrounding a produce stand, grocery store, and tailor shop on the northeast corner of Bleecker and Christopher Streets. Figures and carts cropped at the edge of the etching plate hint at the vast scale and steady pace of city life. In the early nineteenth century, a grocer commissioned this corner building, which has a distinctive curved window trio on its western wall, partially hidden by a streetlamp and fire escape. In the early days of Greenwich Village, these may have afforded handsome views of sunsets over the Hudson River. In Mildred Coughlin's print, created almost a century later, taller buildings have begun to encage the modest corner store. The humble relic remains standing today, complete with its lunette window group, a rare trace of New York's original scale and its multilayered history.