Here we see 69 Worth Street. We are looking north, most likely in 1898 (photo from Museum of City of NY). The street was “textile row” back then.  The left side where Mr. Bowler Hat walks looks pretty much the same now (2013) as it did in 1898.  But the right side of the street has been demolished. The demolition took place in 1964 and created a parking lot.  ATT eventually bought the parking lot, demolished even more cast iron buildings on Thomas Street, and then built the gigantic windowless tower that is frequently voted “ugliest building in NYC”. The bottom photo was taken at the same spot in 2013.  You can see at the end of it the federal building that Ada Louise Huxtable (the former architecture critic at the Times) called a “farce” and “an immense, blank, featureless wall”, and “Washington’s gift of double disaster to NY.”