When you go to spend a few days in New York you never get bored. And that is precisely the problem, there are so many things to visit, discover and live in this city that you never have time to get bored. And I don't mean bored, I mean discovering things beyond what we all know, whether we have been to New York or not.
On one of our trips, we decided that we wanted to experience New York without rushing. So we planted ourselves in the Big Apple for three weeks willing to even get bored in New York (if that's even possible). This allowed us to get out of the tourist areas par excellence and
dive into the history of other neighborhoods beyond Manhattan or Brooklyn and other buildings beyond the Empire State Building.
And so,
we went into the borough of Queens, in the Long Island City neighborhood, to learn about the history of 5 Pointz.
The 5 Pointz is a building located at 45-46 Davis Street. A building that, when it opened in 1892, housed the Neptune Meter water meter factory. In the early 1970s, developer Jerry Wolkoff acquired this industrial complex without a very clear idea of what to do with it, until he decided he would lease it to other companies. And so, in the 1990s, the former water meter factory began to host artists' studios. And when art flows, it flows, so one could only expect an explosion of spontaneous creativity that filled the facades of the building with graffiti. Undoubtedly, an extensive mural in which to capture talent.
And what was born as something spontaneous became institutionalized with the support of Wolkoff himself, owner of the building,
making 5 Pointz the mecca of graffiti. A veritable open-air museum of urban art that delighted local and foreign passersby.
They baptized it as 5 Pointz with the idea that on its walls would converge the artistic expression not only of Queens, but of the 5
boroughs of the city: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. It seems that the pioneers of this initiative did not count on the fact that
creativity goes beyond any border and soon this old factory became the world epicenter of aerosol art.
Jonathan Cohen (Meres One) was one of the artists most involved with the project, recovering it from vandalism and turning it into what became
The Institute of Higher Burnin or 5 Pointz.
Cohen took the reins of the 5 Pointz, managing the works exhibited there but without excluding young artists who sought the opportunity to express their creativity in the famous building.
There was room for everyone at 5 Pointz.
Street art that attracted advertisers, music videos and Hollywood itself. But the best thing about the 5 Pointz was just that, it was street,
accessible to anyone who wanted to enjoy it. The 5 Pointz delighted big brands but also the passengers of the 7 train, probably immersed in their daily routine.
Four years ago, however, the color disappeared from the 5 Pointz. Its bricks dawned stained white, erasing any trace of the talented artistry that had previously covered them. The building's owner, Wolkoff, took advantage of a November night to paint its facades, eliminating all traces of the creativity and illusions that had been captured there. Wolkoff had decided to build luxury buildings.
Farewell to 20 years of urban art history.
From that moment on, the artists began a legal fight against the owner of the building, taking advantage of the law of artistic property, while he did the same with the law of material property.
Do you want to know how the dispute ended?
Art 1 - Luxury Apartments 0. Last November 8 (almost 4 years after the fateful night) the jury decided that the artists' work was legally protected by the VARA (Visual Artists Rights Act). An unprecedented sentence that undoubtedly gives aerosol art the dignity and respect it deserves.
