Here’s Why New Yorkers Are So Happy The Astor Place Cube Is Back!

Finally, “The Alamo”, or as it’s more commonly know “The Astor Place Cube” is back where it belongs! Even the building at 51 Astor Place is over the moon:

I’m just a complex trapezoidal rhombohedron, standing in front of a #cube, asking it to love me.

— 51 Astor Place (@51deathstar) November 2, 2016

This popular work of public art was conceived by artist Tony Rosenthal in 1967 and has been a meeting point for people in the East Village ever since… but is that the only reason we miss it… because we gather there?

In the fall of 2014 the Cube was removed for cleaning and to ease the addition of seating and the creation of pedestrian plazas. As work came close to an end many of us have felt that it’s been the missing piece of the Astor Place puzzle.

Several times over the summer we heard reports of the cubes return, first in June, then in August. We waited with baited breath… but alas, nothing… maybe maybe it’s absence has made us miss it that little bit more. Especially with the false starts we’ve endured over the last four months.

The truth is, our cube is iconic. It’s at once at home and alien in its environment, it almost embodies how many of us feel about being a New Yorker.

It’s had a girlfriend:

It’s been covered in wool:

It’s been pranked:

…and imitated

This #halloweekend has been great, but the best costume still goes to the spinning Alamo Cube of 2015….Happy Halloween!!! pic.twitter.com/XtWZaFevwR

— Astor Place NYC (@AstorPlaceNYC) October 31, 2016

…but it has endured. and perhaps THAT, is why we love it so much. Welcome back.

Featured Image by Phillip Ritz