Forty years ago, after buying the buildings, which were mostly abandoned at the time, Mr. Wolkoff leased the space to a company that made record player accessories, then eight-track tapes and then CD covers before moving out in the early 1990s.

Casting about for new tenants, Mr. Wolkoff rented studios to artists for a few hundred dollars a month. Around that time he was also approached by a man who removed graffiti from buildings around the city, and wanted to know if the painters could use Mr. Wolkoff’s walls as canvases. Liking their work, Mr. Wolkoff gave them more and more space. In 2002, a graffiti artist named Meres One took the endeavor over, becoming its curator and christening it 5Pointz.

Five stories high, the buildings occupied most of a city block, a playful, wacky visual counterpoint to the solemn low-slung MoMA PS 1 site across the street. The canary yellow walls were covered with constantly changing artwork — Brobdingnagian bubble letters, colorful cartoons and meticulously wrought images created by painters from France, Italy, Japan and beyond. Stepping into 5Pointz’s interior courtyard was like plunging into a lurid fever dream.

Though street art is meant to be temporary, 5Pointz became known as a graffiti museum. And the medium itself, once considered a symbol of urban unraveling, became a sought after gallery-worthy commodity, with work from street artists like Banksy commanding millions of dollars. Which is one of the reasons the whitewashing of 5Pointz’s walls was greeted with such vociferous dismay. “What?! What did they do?!” cried a tour guide named Hans Von Rittern, as he raced out of a tour bus early Tuesday, his arms wide, his face crumpling as soon as he caught sight of Ms. Flaguel. They embraced tightly and wept.

Mr. Von Rittern regularly brought busloads of Europeans to the site, which he considered the crowning glory of his tour of boroughs outside Manhattan. “I don’t understand. How can you erase 12 years of history?” he said. “It’s cruel.”

But Mr. Wolkoff said that graffiti was ephemeral, and that there would be plenty of space for artists’ work around his new buildings. He decided to erect high-rise towers after the real estate market began heating up — Long Island City has sprouted many new residential towers with glass and steel replacing the brick and mortar that once dominated the working-class neighborhood. The 5Pointz artists and supporters had been scrambling to get landmark status, but were turned down by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in August because the buildings lacked architectural distinction and the artwork was less than 30 years old. In October, the City Council approved Mr. Wolkoff’s plan, and this month a federal judge ruled against the 5Pointz group, saying that he could not stop the buildings’ demolition.