I like looking down this stretch of Broome Street in Soho, mostly because of the towering baroque skyscraper (487 Broadway) that you see in the back there. Built in 1895, it was a cutting-edge building known as the Silk Exchange due to the high number of powerful silk merchants that worked there.
Not long after in 1899, it was purchased by “The Western Millionaire” James B. Haggin, a duderancher who made himself big money developing Western mines and breeding horses. Haggin paid $850,000 for the whole building, and henceforth it became known as the Haggin Building. Here’s an old school photo taken from not long after its construction…Amazingly, not much has changed! 
