Andy Warhol’s Fourth and Final Factory – The Con Edison Building.  According to Bob Colacello, the landlord of the previous Factory at 860 Broadway told Andy Warhol that he would be tripling the rent when the lease expired at the end of 1983. Fred Hughes found the new location – an old Con Edison factory on Madison Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets. “The space was enormous, with three separate wings, each with its own entrance: One would be for the Factory, one for Interview, and the third would be rented out. The price wasn’t bad for midtown real estate: $1.5 million.” (BC459)

A deposit was put down on 31 December 1981 and the deal was closed in 1982. Renovation of the site cost a further $ 3 million. (L&D457)

John T. O’Connor in Unseen Warhol: “Fred Hughes, Andy’s right hand for so many years, was fond of saying that no one who worked for Andy at 860 Broadway or 33rd Street referred to those spaces as the Factory. We all referred to it as the office. This is true, but those spaces, especially the latter really were true to the factory production line aesthetic of the silver-foil-covered space of the early to mid-60s.Andy’s last workspace was huge. Had it been in black and white, it would have been straight out of Fritz lang’s Metropolis. The five-story ‘T’ shaped building stretched from 32nd Street to 33rd Street as well as a wing connecting to Madison Avenue. It encompassed a (finally) ballroom-sized painting space for Andy, spaces for stretching oversized paintings, video studio and screening room, expanded offices for a newly profitable Interview, two kitchens, an elevator, dining room, multiple bathrooms – some with granite showers, and a roof deck with electric doors…

But what really made Andy happy about that megalith of a building were the possibilities for storage. Hundreds of paintings could be stored, along with prints, unfinished projects, his Time Capsule series and, most importantly, his own acquisitions… What didn’t make it up to his house on East 66th Street ended up at the office.” (text courtesy of Warholstars.org)

The Piano Connection

In descending chronological order