by In later decades, the building It housed companies supplying metal carpentry and kitchen equipment. Don DeLillo wrote Great Jones Street into the annals of American literature in 1973, when he named his third novel after the street. The book’s narrator-protagonist, a disillusioned rock star, Bucky Wunderlickhe lives in a slum apartment: “I went to the room on Great Jones Street, a crooked little room, cold as a penny, overlooking warehouses and trucks and rubble.”
Warhol purchased 57 Great Jones Street in 1970 under the corporate name Factory Films Inc., according to a report by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 1983, when he became a mentor to Basquiat, who was then a rapidly rising art world star, Warhol rented him the upstairs loft. In the following years, Basquiat produced works such as “King Zulu” and “Riding With Death.”
“Jean-Michel called,” Warhol wrote in his diary on September 5, 1983. “He is afraid of becoming something temporary. And I told him not to worry, that he wouldn’t be. But then I got scared because he rented our building in Great Jones and what if he’s a passenger and doesn’t have the money to pay the rent?
After Mr. Basquiat’s death, the exterior of the building became a Mecca for street artists to leave tributes to him, and the site has been marked with interpretations of his crown motif and the “SAMO” graffiti tag ever since.
The Warhol estate sold the building in the early 1990s. After that, as neighborhood gentrification accelerated and nightlife spots like B Bar and the Bowery Hotel, an unnumbered reference-only Japanese restaurant, prospered phone in the list, Bohemian, took over the leadership. He was hiding, speakeasy-style, behind a butcher shop.
In 2022, Meridian Capital Group put the building on the rental market for $60,000 one month. His landlord, according to property records, is the prominent real estate appraiser. Robert von Ancken, whose services have been used by New York real estate families, including the Trumps, the Helmsleys and the Zeckendorfs. Reached by phone, Mr. Von Ancken clarified that he had purchased the building with his business. coupleLeslie Garfield, who died last year, and that he now owns the property with Mr. Garfield’s family.
