For three short days, December 15-17th, Wooster Collective in conjunction with Elias/Cummings Development unveiled the largest and most magnificent street art exhibit of the year (if not the century) at 11 Spring Street in Manhattan’s trendy Nolita neighborhood. Entitled Wooster on Spring, the exhibit featured original works by hundreds of world famous street artists including WK Interact (NY), Blek Le Rat (Paris), Shepard Fairey (LA), Thundercut, Ripo, Imindentdisaster, Darkcloud (NY), Nick Georgiou, Elbowtow, Jasmine Zimmerman, Rene Gagnon, LEPOS, Dissolve, Bo and Microbo (Milan), Prune (Paris), SSUR (NY), Speto (Brazil), Rekal (Venice), CERF (NY), David Ellis (NY), Swoon (NY), among others.

The sheer scale of the exhibit and the number of artists involved drew several hundred people throughout the course of three days. Lines to enter ran over five blocks long and wound through the tiny streets of Nolita. The wait was anywhere from one to three hours!

Lucky for those in line, the wait was part of the fun as the entire exterior of 11 Spring Street is widely known as one of the most famous public street art canvases in the world. In fact, it was the building’s façade itself that initially inspired the exhibit.

A brief history lesson for those less familiar: for years, 11 Spring Street (known to many as the Candle building) has been veiled in mystery and urban legend. Its seemingly vacant interior, eerie candle-lit windows and constantly evolving façade of ephemeral graffiti captured the fascination of locals, passer-bys and street art fans alike. Not only was the building a common topic of conversation in the neighborhood but it was also an international destination for graffiti fans and street art aficionados.

It wasn’t until Elias/Cummings Development purchased the building earlier this year that plans to extend art from the exterior to the interior and open the space to the public began to take shape. As the story goes, Bill and Caroline Cummings, the building’s new owners, wanted to find a way to celebrate the space and the art that had become such a critical part of the neighborhood’s history before turning it into luxury condos.

Their first step was to hit the internet and investigate the building’s history, which eventually lead them to the Wooster Collective website where a number of the artists featured on the building’s famous walls had been featured and documented in photos.

After contacting Marc Schiller, Wooster Collective founder, the idea of a massive street art exhibit, utilizing the interior of the cavernous building came into being.

“We decided to do an exhibition inside the building that would celebrate the end of an era in the neighborhood and at the same time, showcase the work of a group of amazing creative artists by whose work we all have been inspired for many years,” explained Marc and Sara Schiller. Despite over 30,000 square feet of wall space, art soon covered every square inch. 

WK’s signature black and white, frozen-in-motion images and Shepard Fairey’s iconic red black and white studies greeted guests on the first floor while Lady Pink awaited exhibit-goers on the fourth. The three-day street art extravaganza lived up to and far beyond everyone’s expectations and will likely go down in history as the most magnificent street art exhibit of all time. 

As Wooster Collective reports, something of this scale was bound to happen in the contemporary urban street art scene somewhere because “people need to create, not because they are allowed to but because in their heart, all they need is to be recognized for being a human being on this planet just like everyone else.”

As others commented, Wooster on Spring shows the distinct differences in what’s considered art in the first place. MOMA, which is starting to host some artwork of these street artists, should look at this spontaneous exhibition as a symbol of where things are heading and what people want. As Marc and Sara Schiller say, what happened last weekend in New York is just the tip of the iceberg.

Wooster on Spring was highly documented. Here are some of the latest photos: