Laing Stores, 1954.

Famed cast-iron architectural pioneer James Bogardus designed this curved corner building at the northwest corner of Washington and Murray Streets in 1849. The four-story building was completed for the stores of Edward H. Laing. Construction on the building took just two months, an impressive accomplishment for the period. It was one of the earliest uses of prefabricated, mass-produced, modular iron parts for curtain-wall construction, and it was one of the oldest cast-iron building in the world.

The building was scheduled for demolition in the late 1960s as part of the urban renewal of the Washington Market area. It remained standing until 1971. Owing to its iconic place in architectural history (the NY Times suggested that " in a sense, all skyscrapers are its grandchildren") the building was carefully dismantled. The pieces were labeled and stored in a nearby vacant lot. The hope was that the building would be reassembled next to its original site on the campus of Manhattan Community College.

But in 1974 disaster struck, three men were discovered removing the building pieces from the lot. While a small section of panels was recovered, broken, in a Bronx junkyard, more than 60% of the pieces had already been sold for scrap. Later a building in the South Street Seaport was planned, and it was to use the remaining panels and new parts. While the remaining pieces were under lock and key following the earlier burglary, they too were stolen in 1977.

An entirely new building, a reproduction of the Laing Stores, was completed at the corner of Fulton and Fronts Streets in 1983 and still stands.