The Great Jones Street carriage house mattered to Andy Warhol both as part of a potentially useful piece of real estate and as a setting for his complicated dealings with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Warhol saw the property together with another nearby holding on the Bowery as a single, promising lot, but its day-to-day association with Basquiat brought practical obligations and unease about access to Warhol’s home.

Property and Possible Use

Warhol described the Great Jones Street carriage house as part of a larger parcel that included another property around the corner on the Bowery. He told Basquiat that the two holdings made a valuable combined lot and floated the possibility that they might someday put a theater there. This was a future possibility, not a project reported as underway: in the diary, the property’s significance rests on Warhol’s sense of its potential and on his decision to retain it rather than sell it to Basquiat.

Basquiat and the Rent

Basquiat wanted to buy the carriage house from Warhol. Around this period, Bruno (art dealer) paid Basquiat’s first month’s security and rent. A later entry records Warhol calling Basquiat because the rent was due and Bruno had not brought the payment. The delay made the property part of a continuing financial and personal negotiation, rather than simply an asset Warhol could hold at a distance.

Access and Boundaries

The rent call also led to conflict over privacy. Warhol became angry when Jay Shriver had given Basquiat his home telephone number; he regarded Basquiat as unreliable because of his drug use and did not want him coming to the house. Afterward, however, Warhol felt bad about having called Basquiat over the rent. When Richard Weisman sent tickets to a hockey game at Wayne Gretzky’s invitation, Warhol invited Basquiat and sent Jay home early to deliver his ticket. The episode shows the tension surrounding the property’s role in their relationship: Warhol insisted on limits to personal access, yet made a gesture of inclusion after the business dispute had sharpened those limits.