{"id":2900,"slug":"puck-building-new-york-new-york","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Puck Building is the fortress a humor magazine built — the seven-story Romanesque block on Lafayette Street that Joseph Keppler raised in 1885–86 to house Puck, the satirical weekly he had launched in German in 1876 and in English a year later. At its peak Puck was the most influential humor magazine in America, skewering every public figure of the Gilded Age in full-color lithographs, and its headquarters was called 'the largest building in the world devoted to the business of lithographing and publishing' — nearly eight acres of floor space.","The building advertises itself the way the magazine did: two gilded statues of Puck — Shakespeare's imp, the magazine's mascot — stand guard over the Houston and Mulberry corner and the Lafayette entrance, sculpted by Henry Baerer with the motto 'What Fools These Mortals Be!' Albert Wagner designed it in three phases, and when the city sliced Lafayette Street through the footprint in 1899, Wagner took the cut and rebuilt the face. Puck died in 1918; the building outlived it by a century, and in the 1980s it was saved from demolition to become offices, event space, and — fittingly — the home of Spy magazine, the next generation's satire.","The file keeps the Puck Building: the magazine's fortress, the golden imp still grinning at Houston Street, and the printing district survivor that outlasted its paper.","The Puck Building is the archive's satire file — the humor magazine's palace, the gilded mascot, and the building that survived its own punchline."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Puck Building is the archive's satire file — Puck magazine's 1886 headquarters, the gilded statues, and the publishing district's last great survivor.","A magazine that died in 1918 keeps its building — the file's suggestion being that Puck's hold is the architecture: the Romanesque fortress, the golden imp, and the presses that stopped but never left."]}],"name":"Puck Building","aliases":[],"type":"SITE","type_label":"Site","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_BUILDING"],"groups":["hauntings","legends"],"desc":"The 1885 magazine building—where Puck’s statue watches Lafayette Street.","full_desc":"Puck Building is a site in New York, New York. The 1885 magazine building—where Puck’s statue watches Lafayette Street. HauntHunt files it with local folklore and haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 documented fact — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.","address":null,"city":"New York","county":null,"state":"New York","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":40.662712,"lon":-73.938677,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"NYC batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":2648,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures in the building. The reports at Puck Building are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. The file holds testimony rather than proof; the claim remains anecdotal. The report is preserved in sources like 'Puck Building'. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Puck Building","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_Building","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Built 1885; the magazine is documented. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Puck Building'. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1885","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Puck Building","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_Building","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Puck Building","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_Building","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Puck Building","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_Building","desc":"Building in Manhattan, New York","extract":"The Puck Building is a mixed-use building at 295–309 Lafayette Street in the SoHo and Nolita neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The building was designed by Albert Wagner in the Romanesque Revival style, with elements inspired by the German Rundbogenstil style. It is composed of two sections: the original seven-story building to the north and a nine-story southern annex. The Lafayette Street elevation of the facade was designed by Herman Wagner in a style similar to that of the original building. The Puck Building is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nThe Puck Building occupies the block bounded by Lafayette","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Puck_Building_%2851660567363%29.jpg/960px-Puck_Building_%2851660567363%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":104,"lat":40.7248,"lon":-73.9953},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}