How a New York Developer Gentrified the #$&*!# Out of a Graffiti Landmark

By 2013, 5Pointz was a dead building with living skin.

Along the former factory’s flank slept a giantess in a sky-blue headscarf, beside a bright orange tiger in mid-leap; on a nearby door, Vincent Van Gogh stared out at a starry night. Skulls and grinning light-bulbs and a blunt-smoking Batman and even a three-eyed Homer Simpson swarmed across the brickwork, there one week and gone the next, always replaced by new characters. Most of the building’s interior might have been an abandoned wreck, but the outside walls bloomed vivid with chemical color.

5Pointz went by many aliases, including the United Nations of Graffiti and The Institute of Higher Burning. Street artists such as Tats Cru, Cope2, OD, Tracy 168 and Stay High 149 left their mark on its walls. Directors and musicians used it as a backdrop for videos; a scene from the heist film “Now You See Me” was shot there.

Its curator and protector, Jonathan Cohen (who went by the nom d’artiste Meres One), wanted to transform the space into a non-profit landmark. But those plans came to a crashing halt in late 2013 — because, despite its fame as a Queens landmark, 5Pointz also stood in the way of progress: over the course of several years, the surrounding neighborhood of Long Island City had become the latest target of…