Men and boys outside the entrance to 30 Lafayette Place (now No. 417 Lafayette Street), measuring cracks in the stoop of No. 28, August 8, 1901.

Between 1897 and 1904, the city undertook twin projects connecting Lafayette Place to Elm Street, while building the IRT East Side Line (which later became the Lexington Avenue Line) by the cut and cover method.

The man at right holds a measuring tape to the protruding stoop of No. 28 Lafayette Place, then a residential dwelling with a lower-floor storefront. The stoop and Greek Revival ornamentation were removed in 1911, during a street-widening project. Other such "encroachments" were removed along the block.