This triangle is one of three built into the brick wall of a 175-year-old building in New York City’s financial district. The meaning of the shapes is a mystery that has captured the imagination of historians, and councilman, and others. Even the developer who demolished the building to make way for a parking lot was convinced to save that section of the wall. It’s now stored in a crate. Historian Alan Solomon who fought to save the wall believes the triangles might be a religious symbol put there by devout Christian businessman William Colgate who once owned the building. Maybe Dan Brown would know. From the Associated Press:
The triangle has traditionally been used to represent the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity. Some scholars, while stressing the need for more research, think the Pearl Street symbol evokes esotericism – efforts to delve for divine meaning in numbers, geometry, nature and elsewhere. The symbol was even the subject of a presentation at an academic conference on esotericism in Amsterdam in 2005.The triangular forms could encode a message in their proportions, said Joscelyn Godwin, a Colgate University music and medieval studies professor who examined esoteric ideas in “The Theosophical Enlightenment.”
Alfred Willis, a scholar of esotericism’s influence on architecture and a university librarian at Hampton University, suggested that the proportions may point to Bible verses.
