At 7:46 a.m., the latest message popped up on the Web site of the Wooster Collective: "What an amazing weekend!"

Apparently the art collective hadn't slept all night, if at all over the past two days. Thousands of people had lined up for hours outside their downtown New York exhibit to get one rare look at work by some of the world's best street artists.

What was the rush? The exhibit space is going condo. Soon. And the five stories of art, from floor to ceiling, will disappear behind gypsum wallboard. The work will become an almost accidental time capsule ready to rediscovered by remodelers of the future.

What could you see? A floor-to-ceiling painting of the iconic Che Guevara image, only with the face rotting. Soon to be hidden. A playful mishmash of animatronic-looking hippo and spaceboy, or sculptures of strangely wrinkled babies. Soon to be gone. A huge, random messages: "HYPE," "the bad seed - will I ever find love?" See ya! All will be shrouded from public view until the next remodeler comes by and tears down the walls.

The building at 11 Spring Street, long ago a carriage house, in recent years had become a magnet for well-known and not so well-known urban artists. Images piled up on each other, layered like the rings of a tree.

Word got out recently that the building had been sold and would be turned into condominiums. But the new owners, Bill Elias and Caroline Cummings, knew about the art and wanted to celebrate it. So they started talking to the Wooster Collective (woostercollective.com), which documents urban art online and conducts street art walking tours.

Only weeks remained before the renovation work would start. But the calls to the street art world started immediately, and within seven weeks the doors opened on five stories of wild images.

"The idea that you have something being put together with a lot of passion that's supposed to be free to the public to look at — that's going to be destroyed three days later — well, that's beautiful," said Jeff Thornheim, who was waiting in line outside.

Some of the artists made the long wait intriguing. Someone applied the sides of vegetable bins to an outer wall so they looked like they'd been inserted into the brick and filled them with slices of fresh fruits and vegetables. One artist made the event interactive by taking text messages from around the world and putting them up for public reading.

The artists came from Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, from Sweden, from Italy, from London, from the neighboring boroughs. Most are in their 20s and 30s, but one well-known stencil artist, in his 50s, was among them.

As they got to work inside the building and out, word passed on the street. The curious gathered. Snaps were taken.

In the end, the no-sponsor, no-PR exhibit drew what organizers called an overwhelming crowd.

"Let's hope the floors can hold the weight of everybody," said Will Barras, an artist from London, who claimed part of an upstairs wall between two windows and in a couple of days put up an image of a stream of traffic and a crocodile. No explanation. "I just work fast because I get bored and run out of steam," he said.

The artists continued working, hammering and spraying as the first visitors started lining up by the stairs Friday morning. Organizers welcomed people who wanted to make documentaries about the project. They just said, "Film." Several did.

"For a while there, it felt like some sort of mini Woodstock for urban art," co-organizer Marc Schiller wrote this morning online.

In the same sleepy post, he signed off by mentioning his favorite tag of the weekend.

"It was placed just a few feet from the door to get in," he wrote. "Someone had written very small with a pen ... 'hour 5. amost in.'"

What's worth a five-hour wait in line anymore?

Maybe the exhibit was a memorial. Maybe it was a celebration. There seemed to be no tears. "Street art is ephemeral, it's meant to disappear," said co-organizer Sara Schiller. "Either the building owner busts it down or the elements wear it away."

In this case, it will be the pressure hose.

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asap contributor Cara Anna used to get in trouble for drawing on her jeans during class.

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