Over the next decades the building housed metalworking and kitchen equipment supply companies. Don DeLillo put Great Jones Street in 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 Wunderlick, lives in an apartment there: “I went to the room on Great Jones Street, a crooked little room, cold as a penny, overlooking warehouses, trucks and rubble. .”
Mr. Warhol purchased 57 Great Jones Street in 1970 under the company name Factory Films Inc., according to a report by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 1983, as he became a mentor to Mr. Basquiat, who was then a burgeoning global art star, Mr. Warhol rented the upstairs loft from him. In subsequent years, Mr. Basquiat produced works such as “King Zulu” and “Riding With Death.”
“Jean-Michel called,” Mr. Warhol wrote in his diary on September 5, 1983. “He is afraid of being just a flash in the pan. And I told him not to worry, that he wouldn’t be. But then I got scared because he rented our building on Great Jones and what if he’s just a flash in the pan and doesn’t have the money to pay his rent ?
After Mr. Basquiat’s death, the building’s exterior became a mecca for street artists who paid tribute to him, and the site has since been marked by renditions of his crown motif and the “SAMO” graffiti.
The Warhol estate sold the building in the early 1990s. After that, as the neighborhood’s gentrification accelerated and nightlife spots like B Bar and the Bowery Hotel flourished, a referral-only Japanese restaurant and with no telephone number listed, Bohemian, occupied the address. It was hidden, like a speakeasy, behind a butcher’s shop.
In 2022, the building was put on the rental market by Meridian Capital Group for $60,000 per month. Its owner, according to property records, is famed 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 telephone, Mr. Von Ancken specified that he had bought the building with his partner, Leslie Garfield, who died last year, and that he now owns the property with Mr. Garfield’s family.