On Long Island, an Eye-Catching Take on a Landmark

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/nyregion/glen-cove-ny-landmark.html

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GLEN COVE, N.Y. — Last year, Joe LaPadula bought an abandoned, centuries-old mansion on Long Island with plans to refurbish it. Instead, he ruined it.

Actually, that depends on whom you ask.

The house, parts of which date to 1810, was built by a descendant of one of the founders of this small coastal city about an hour from Manhattan. Today it sits covered with paint, its three stories blasted — or, in graffiti parlance, “blessed” — with the signature scrawls, robots, zombies, cigarette-smoking goldfish, leering eyeballs, dripping bananas and other work of 125 graffiti artists.

Mr. LaPadula, a local auto body shop owner who specializes in customizing luxury cars, invited them to use the dilapidated house as their canvas for an exhibition called First City Project.

“You know that saying? ‘Never forget where you’re coming from’?” Mr. LaPadula, 48, who grew up working as a gas station attendant in Howard Beach, Queens, said on Sunday. He sat in the kaleidoscopic front room of the house, beside a pair of containers he had used to clean his car spray-painting guns, now transformed into giant Campbell’s soup cans. “Museum art, it has that pompous feeling and attitude,” he said. “Graffiti is from the streets. I can relate more to the working-class people, and I feel street artists represent more that type of people.”

The plan had been to reopen the house as a restaurant, but after renovations were delayed, Mr. LaPadula’s imagination ran a little wild.

Several years ago, a gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood asked Mr. LaPadula to apply the skills he used to create glittering car chassis to make rainbow-hued picture frames. Suddenly mixing in the world of fine-art graffiti, he met Sean Sullivan, a Bronx-born graffiti artist with whom he collaborated on Lamborghinis and Ferrari hoods. Dabbling as a painter, albeit on car paneling, Mr. LaPadula became a kind of patron of the scene.

Mr. Sullivan, a prominent street artist whose drippy, haunting images found a following on Instagram, and another artist, Harris Lobel, helped call in the talent and curate the show.

But things got thorny in preparation for last week’s opening party, when the pair let several graffiti artists “bless” the outside of the house; it is now covered with more than a dozen neon portraits of a bespectacled woman, the work of an anonymous and celebrated street artist known as Dain. The house is a city landmark, and while the interior is fair game (since it once contained a restaurant), the exterior must be preserved as is. (Charming white clapboard; zero strange faces.)

Up went an outcry, and a Facebook page, where aghast commenters poured in. Or, as Mr. LaPadula puts it, “the town completely lost its mind.”

“This is not Manhattan; this is not Brooklyn,” Dain said in a telephone interview from his home in Coney Island. “They associate graffiti and street art as vandalism, but any time you bring in art, it changes the dynamic of the community; it draws people. It really could be a destination if they embrace it.”

Walking his dog Ginger outside the house on Glen Street on Sunday, Mark Glenn, 65, pursed his lips. He wished it was still a restaurant, like the one where he used to enjoy a Friday dinner special, rather than what he feels is now an eyesore, out of step with the seaside community. Moreover, he said, the unusual art might upset older residents.

“This is like something that should be in Manhattan,” Mr. Glenn said. “I don’t think anybody will go in there.”

But last week, more than 1,200 people packed the house for an opening party, the curators said. The space has since hosted a troop of local Girl Scouts, and calls are coming in from educators inquiring about class trips. The building is not yet open to the public.

Although the team behind First City Project had intended the graffiti exhibition to be a place holder before turning the house back into a restaurant, they are now considering making the building a museum where visitors can explore galleries like an attic-turned-prayer room by the Moroccan artist Rocko, who paints in interlaced Arabic-style script, and a gutted industrial kitchen with murals that pour over the bones of an old stove.

One room features works by local art teachers and students. In a room on the ground floor, the words “look up” are painted underfoot, tilting visitors’ heads back to take in the ceiling, with an image of the swirling cosmos.

The mayor of Glen Cove, Reginald Spinello, welcomes the controversy. “Art is in the eye of the beholder,” he said. “Anything that is transformative brings about questions. That is the beauty of art.”

Glen Cove was founded nearly 350 years ago as an agrarian village, and it enjoyed its industrial heyday in the late 19th century. The city of 27,000 has struggled to attract visitors and their much-needed dollars. The mayor hopes the house will drive some tourism its way.

Still, he said, rules are rules. The goggle-eyed portraits on the outside of the house must be wiped away — and soon.

Last week, the group reached a compromise with the city: The exterior décor has a reprieve of a week or so. After that, it must be returned to its 1810 appearance.

Outside the building on Sunday, Ginger, Mr. Glenn’s dog, explored the grounds, with her owner trailing after her, every so often looking up and shaking his head. As they walked, Bonnie Mollin, 55, a pet food chef, strolled up. She had heard about the house and wanted to check it out.

“Whatever the hell it’s going to be,” Mr. Glenn said, “I don’t think it’s going to be a hit.”

Ms. Mollin interjected: “We’ve got nothing going on here. I would hope that you’re wrong.”