Under the Cover

On a regular basis, I walk past the building at 111 Cedar Street/112 Trinity Place/108 Liberty Street, which no one ever thinks about unless they’re looking for Burger King. Here’s streetview of the Liberty Steet facade: According to the Certificate of Occupancy, the top two floors are vacant and the windowless third floor is back-of-house space for the restaurant. So, today, the building and Burger King are one and the same. Here’s the photo I took that got me thinking about the past of the building: Note the two cast-iron columns, at the far right side of the first floor and between the door and the storefront covered by the roll-down shutter. The first hint that this has to be an old building is that no one has built such a small building in lower Manhattan in a very long time; the second hint is the presence of those columns. But we have to go way back…I remember that Burger King from 30 years ago; the 1980s tax photo shows it there as well. (On a side note, a 45-year-old or maybe…