The Cooper Cube

The Cooper Cube, as it is popularly known, is located in New York City's East Village, on the strangely-shaped concrete island bordered on the south by Astor Place, the north by E 8th Street, Lafayette Street on the west side, and Cooper Square/4th Avenue on the east.

The sculpture is a huge black cube formed of Cor-Ten steel, 15 feet high, balanced on one of its points. The area itself is home to other landmarks: the Cooper Union is across the street, and the Astor Place subway with its redesigned IRT kiosks has exits directly to the north and east.

The structure has many simple nicknames, including "the Cube", "the Black Cube", and "the Borg Cube". Its real name, which few people know since it is written (in black) on a hard-to-read (black) sign on the southeast corner of its (black) base, is "Alamo".

Alamo was designed by Minimalist artist Bernard "Tony" Rosenthal between 1966 and 1967.


The above picture was uploaded to Flickr by dugan9 on August 25, 2009


Other views of The Cooper Cube:




Brown building at right, with arches, is the Cooper Union building. (not related to Anderson).