This is the old “headhouse” of the first IRT subway that ran from Wall Street to Harlem for a nickel in 1904, designed by Heins & LaFarge, the original architects of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue, which is not finished yet.  Across Broadway is the square they used to call Needle Park, when the neighborhood smacked of post-WWII hobos and the rebellious middle-class youth who grew up in the West 60s & 70s, when pro bohemiandos shilled for the grime. It was near this station in 2007 that a woman on the street called Alec Baldwin an “asshole,” in response to the great actor’s widely-publicized, venomous phone message left in the voicebox of his daughter Ireland. Surely, this was an Upper West Side moment.