The Hess triangle is a triangular, 500-square-inch (3,200 cm2) plot of private land in the middle of a public sidewalk at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
[1] The plot is an isosceles triangle[a] covered by a mosaic plaque that reads "Property of the Hess Estate which has never been dedicated for public purposes.
[3] In the early 1910s, the city claimed eminent domain to acquire and demolish 253 buildings in the area in order to widen Seventh Avenue and expand the IRT subway.
[5] However, 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 a small corner of Plot 55 and they set up a notice of possession.
[2] The city asked the family to donate the diminutive property to the public, but they chose to hold out and installed the present, defiant mosaic on July 27, 1922.