Grocery store at the corner of Christopher and Bleecker Streets, June, 1925.

This tiny corner store was built between 1802 and 1808 by a grocer named William Patterson, in what was then a rural village. In 1807, the house at the corner of Herring (Bleecker) and Christopher Streets served as a meeting place for the commission charged with designing Manhattan’s street grid.

Lead surveyor John Randel spent ten years staking out and marking intersections from 1st Street to 155th Street. Recognized as a work of genius today, Randel and his surveyors were pelted with cabbages and artichokes by landowners furious at the prospect of streets being plowed through their properties.