Untapped Cities writer Bhushan Mondkar snapped this photograph of the nearly complete demolition at 5Pointz over Thanksgiving weekend. We’ve been following the slow evisceration of the beloved street art hotspot over the past few months–heading into the building in mid-October and watching the sign come down at the end of October. Just before Thanksgiving, a memorial was held on the anniversary of the whitewashing. But this photograph heralds the end.
As Bhushan tells us, “It was really painful to see it, especially since I have been seeing 5 Pointz everyday from the 7 train for the past few years. You really see the scale of this destruction from higher up. The new skyscrapers on 57th street in the background just add to the sadness, because that’s what will be replacing 5 Pointz. From my vantage point, you really get a snapshot of the direction in which the city is heading–soul-less shoe box Architecture, competing to get a piece of the sky, with no character what so ever.”
Soon, visitors to New York City who ride the 7 train won’t even realize there used to be something there that made such a wonderful contrast with the Manhattan skyline behind–a building that encapsulated through art and architecture the fervor of an art movement that’s still fighting to be heard. When the residential towers do go up, perhaps even to be called 5Pointz if the trademark goes through, what we’ll be left with is a self-referential mirror image of Manhattan–not distinctively Queens anymore and not quite Manhattan.
See 35 photographs of what 5Pointz looked like inside as demolition was just beginning and check out what 5Pointz looked like in its heyday.
