Andy Warhol’s former studio building on Broadway and East 17th Street has been home to many businesses since the Pop artist decamped from his third-floor Factory in 1984, after a decade at 860 Broadway. A nightclub (the Underground) was there in the ‘80s, followed by a Petco in the mid-90s, which relocated nearby in 2023.
The commercial building’s ground floor retail space has been vacant for the intervening years, but a new tenant has moved it. The Japanese fashion brand Uniqlo will open its seventh New York store at 860 Broadway tomorrow.
860 Broadway, where the new Uniqlo Union Square store opens on Apr. 3, 2026.
It is unclear if the store expands all the way to the third floor, the former location of Warhol’s Factory. Either way, Uniqlo is using the location’s connection to Wahol’s legacy to promote the opening weekend festivities. An Instagram post on from today includes a black-and-white photograph from 1983 of Warhol standing in front of a wall with a sideways American flag, and the 1978 print, Self-Portrait with Skull. T-shirts and tote bags will these images will be available exclusively at the Union Square outpost. The Warhol Foundation is, of course, tagged in the post.
Uniqlo has had licensing agreements with many globally popular artists (among them KAWS, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat), not to mention a MoMA specific collab featuring artworks by van Gogh, Gauguin, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp.
Given Warhol’s eager embrace of commerce and advertising in his lifetime, it’s reasonable to wonder if he would delight in being “used” to sell canvas tote bags and fast fashion cotton T-shirts. As Jeppe Ugelvig wrote in an Art in America article about artists (and later, their estates) extending their legacies via licensing agreements, the Warhol Foundation’s focus, since disbanding its art authentication arm in 2011, is, in fact, licensing.
