NYC - Meatpacking District: Little Flatiron Building

This triangular building by Silas Clark Herring in 1849 as a factory for the Herring Safe & Lock Company. Located on a triangular plot at Ninth Avenue, Hudson Street and West 14th Street, it is sometimes referred to as the "Little Flatiron Building."

The Herring factory occupied the building until the early 1880s. By 1884, the entire complex gained a fifth floor, and the interior was converted to stores with lofts above. Today it houses Vento Trattoria, a hip Italian restaurant. Downstairs is the restaurant's lounge, Level V, which used to be J's Hangout, an underground gay club, which was formerly the gay leather club The Manhole, and before that the straight Hellfire Club.

The façade of the red brick factory features a steady tempo of fenestration and (with the exception of Ninth Avenue) the building's 1884 cornice. Many of the building’s storefronts were bricked over.

Lofts still occupy the upper floors. The building contained Glenn Close's apartment in Fatal Attraction. Ed Harris jumps out of the north corner in The Hours.