Candy Factory

VANISHING

The parking lot and two small brick buildings at the corner of Wooster and Grand are about to vanish.

They have been, for some time, a beloved and well-used graffiti spot. In recent years, the lot's walls have hosted a Banksy rat, a Fairey paste-up, and French street artist JR's paste-up of a giant photo of a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. But it's around the corner where the real fun happened.


Those walls belong to what's known locally as the Candy Factory, a spot that the New York Times published a visual guide to in 2005. It has changed many times since then--images constantly coming and going--but here comes the biggest change of all. The Candy Factory and the parking lot are wrapped in plywood and readied for condo-fication. The parking lot is being hammered and drilled.

I miss the colorful collection of street art hidden here at the back end of what was once a Tootsie Roll factory at 325-329 West Broadway.

my flickr, 2010

The future of these buildings is unclear. The project is now on (at least) its third architect, as DDG Partners recently wrapped the plywood in vinyl printed to look like a chocolate candy bar in silver foil. 


The only rendering that DDG offers is one of the Candy Factory wrapped in scaffolding, which it currently is not.


In the previous architectural plans, these brick buildings would remain standing, "restored to their circa 1940 condition based on the city records and historic research by the architects and their consultants."

Beyhan Karahan Architects

Wrapping around them would be a nine-story, 45,000-square-foot, residential condo. It would be topped, said the developer's website, with "a two-story duplex penthouse set back from the perimeter walls, allowing a stone terrace to fully wrap the glazed, pavilion-like structure and its private swimming pool."

KPF

Will the Candy Factory still remain, in face-lifted brick, wedged between this new condo tower and the luxe SoHo Mews ("Life Cultivated")?

See all my Candy Factory photos here

Here's the spot in the 1980s, from the Municipal Archives, before the Soho Mews moved in, before scenes like this went on across the street--was it still churning out Tootsie Rolls then? And will the new building be cutely named "The Candy Factory Condos"?

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