They spent a year splashing their graffiti and murals across pristine walls, windows, floors and ceilings

On one of the highest floors of a Lower Manhattan office tower, New York street artists have spent the past year spray-painting and splashing their graffiti, murals and other wild creations across pristine walls, windows, floors and ceilings.

But no, it isn’t vandalism.

Developer Larry Silverstein allowed the 50 artists to turn 34,000 square-feet of office space that normally would rent for about a quarter of a million dollars a month into their own sprawling canvas. Multi-coloured graffiti and other works by sculptors and painters explode with images of fantasy and reality, tragedy and comedy.

At 86, Mr. Silverstein is still a force in the rebirth of the World Trade Centre site devastated by the September 11 attacks that killed more than 2,600 people in New York.

“Here I am, an old fogy, but I wanted to do something exciting and different, and to provide a sense of beauty, a sense of peace, in an otherwise difficult world,” he says.

The new tower’s top 11 floors, including the art-filled space, have been leased by Spotify, the Stockholm-based music-streaming company that is moving into other floors but hasn’t yet decided how to incorporate the artworks into its corporate style.

No charge

“It is our intention to keep as much of the art as possible,” said Spotify spokesman Graham James.

The free-standing works are the property of the artists who created them, at no charge. A 9/11 tribute called ‘In Bloom’ by David Uda is a 20-foot circle on the floor painted with 2,606 flowers in memory of the dead. Sean Sullivan has a personal connection to the site; his father was a detective with the city police bomb squad who lost his best friend on 9/11 and was himself hurt. His shield number is highlighted in Mr. Sullivan’s mural, Beautiful Clean-up.

David Hollier sprinkled lyrics from the Broadway musical ‘Hamilton’ into his $10 Bill. And Ron English, who is known as ‘The Godfather of Street Art’, brought the streets into the studio in the sky for his No Brain No Pain, which features reddish brain tissue fashioned into a boxing glove.

Silverstein Properties’ chief marketing officer Dara McQuillan discovered the artists through a Lower Manhattan art shop called the World Trade Gallery where he had some photographs framed.