Two years ago, Mohammad Arif Zaman plunked down $100,000 for a piece of the American Dream — a newsstand in the middle of Greenwich Village.

Originally built in 1950, the newsstand stood out not because of its selection of papers and magazines or because it was in a bustling neighborhood. This stand was different because, in a city of skyscrapers and stand-out architecture, Zaman’s business was located in a tent.

A forest green tent, to be precise, with wooden poles holding up the waterproof tarp smack dab in the middle of the big city.

While the tent looks temporary — like it was erected by some ambitious Boy Scout troop — it has outlasted buildings and businesses that came after its arrival, including Shea Stadium, Crazy Eddie, J&R Music, Pathmark, Border Books, Tower Records and Gray’s Papaya.

They’re all gone — but the tent remains.

“The building has been there since forever,” Zaman told The Post.

Standing on Sixth Avenue near the busy Eighth Street intersection, the 15-foot-long tent was around when Bob Dylan and Alan Ginsberg roamed the Village.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” would frequent the tent, according to Suraj Shelly, 40, the son of the previous tent operator — who had worked the counter there from the time he was 12.

“I ran into [Goodwin] a few months ago outside the place, and we were talking about it and the history of the neighborhood and the place itself,” Shelly said. “She mentioned that her first article that was printed in the New York Times, she bought her copy at the newsstand.”

The idea behind the tent — like many sidewalk newsstands — was to give jobs to vets coming home from World War II.

“They were all at one time owned by veterans that came back,” Shelly said. “The statute still stands. Veterans can come back and get vendor licenses fairly easily from the city, and that was born out of, from what I know, World War II.”

Just as interesting as the green tarp’s ability to survive all these decades is what’s underneath the tent.

Squeeze past the ice cream freezer to get behind the counter and you realize there is barely room for two people to stand.

At your feet, a wooden pallet covers a staircase that leads to a basement filled with cans of Pringles chips, Snapples, and bottles of Naked Juice past their use-by date.

Another staircase leads to a sub-basement that looks like a set from a horror movie. A small black couch has been turned into a makeshift bed and old pieces of plywood are strewn in one corner. Through an opening, one can see an old computer with some kind of spreadsheet on the monitor behind a locked door.

On a far wall, there are two sets of lockers and behind that, according to one of the workers giving the tour, is a secret entrance to the Sixth Avenue subway line.

“In the ’80s, you could actually access part of the station through that wall,” Shelly recalls. “It was like a cloak-and-dagger walkway. If you pick your way through a couple of doors, you end up at the service entrance onto the platform.”

But the tent is not without its controversy.

Neighbors complain that it’s taking up too much of the sidewalk.

One business that’s kvetching is Hao Noodle and Tea by Madam Zhu’s Kitchen, the first New York restaurant by superstar Chinese chef Zhu Rong, which is set to open next door at 401 Sixth.

The space had been empty for almost two years, since the lease for Gobo’s, an upscale vegetarian restaurant, ran out.

“Our tenant just [questioned] if they have to extend that far out [onto the sidewalk],” said Ernest Faraci, director of management at Walter & Samuels, the company that owns the building.

At first, Faraci said that “they kept moving forward” and blocking the sidewalk, but when a reporter pointed out the tent’s footprint had been like that for at least 15 years, he relented.

“Yes, you’re correct that it’s been like that for many, many, many years.”

At first, W&S approached Zaman and asked him to move his tent back.

“All we said was that we wanted to work as good neighbors and we had just asked him to move back so there could be a little more clearance,” Faraci said.

When asked what exactly they’d talked about, Faraci declined to say, but added that “we might have had an off-the-record conversation.” Regardless, the talks went nowhere.

Then someone at W&S — Faraci isn’t saying who — dropped a dime on Zaman and his tent by calling 311, the city’s complaint hotline:

“NEWSSTAND ON 6TH AVE POSSIBLY CONSTRUCTED WITHOUT PERMIT, ENCROACHING ON SIDEWALK, & CONTRARY TO BLDG DEPT RECORDS,” reads a June 10 complaint with the Department of Buildings.

A city inspector found no such sidewalk encroachment.

However, the DoB official did write up Zaman’s tent for violating its Certificate of Occupany: “ECB VIO ISSUED FOR OCCUPANCY CONTRARY TO BUILDING RECORDS.”

“We fined them for the structure not being on the C of O,” Alexander Schnell, a spokesman for the DoB, told The Post. “To resolve the violation, they will either need to get rid of the structure, or amend their C of O.”

That process isn’t cheap. Just to file the proper paperwork, they’d need to hire a state-licensed architect, submit new plans, and pay administrative fees. They’d likely have to put in plumbing.

After the DOB violations came in, his landlord, Samco Properties, cut down the tent that gave the store an enclosure, and that discouraged customers from lingering. And the less customers linger, the less customers spend, Zaman said.

In addition, without the protection of just a few feet of tarp, thefts of soda and candy by school kids and others have spiked, further hurting Zaman’s finances.

Until now, the tent had survived on a mix of good luck and good will, and was seen as just as much of the neighborhood as the landmarked buildings to the north and south.

But the tent’s good luck appears to have run out. After the violations kept coming, Zaman’s landlord lost patience. So after nearly 66 years — the first city record of the tent dates to Nov. 13, 1950, when City Hall gave the structure, and its basement, a temporary CofO — it appears as if the tent will soon be folding.

“It sounds like nothing happened the last 70, 80 years,” cries Zaman, 43, who lives in Elmhurst. “In my time, they’re trying to throw me out.”

“They cannot blame me, because I didn’t do nothing. I just walk in as it is,” he said.

Some locals are already mourning the loss.

“I miss the little stores,” said Susan Quinnveltz, 59, a 25-year resident of the West Village. “They need to make a little space for the necessities places.”