New York

NYC Artist Brings Gingerbread Lane to the Essex Market

The lower east side display contains over 700 gingerbread houses

NBCUniversal Media, LLC

What to Know

  • For over 25 years, Jon Lovitch has been building gingerbread house displays out of homemade edible ingredients.
  • Although it first started as a passion project, building gingerbread house displays has become this former professional chef's full-time job since 2015.
  • Lovitch holds the Guinness World Record for the most number of gingerbread houses in a display: a whopping 1,251 houses. A record achieved in 2017.

It may be hard to imagine what 4,000 pounds of frosting and 1,000 pounds of gingerbread looks like in person.  

Luckily, you can because it exists inside New York City’s Essex Market.

For over 25 years, Jon Lovitch has been building gingerbread house displays out of homemade edible ingredients.

Although it first started as a passion project, building gingerbread house displays has become this former professional chef's full-time job since 2015, with Lovitch now teaching classes for the general public to learn his craft.

“My biggest piece of advice on these is make it Saturday, decorate it Sunday. If you try to decorate it the same day you make it, it is going to keep falling down over and over again,” he said.

Lovitch holds the Guinness World Record for the most number of gingerbread houses in a display: a whopping 1,251 houses. A record achieved in 2017.

“Guinness World Records is very detail oriented so when you go after the world record for number of houses, which is the one I have achieved numerous times, they want backup on every single house, all 1,251 houses. What you made it with, how you made it, video footage, pictures,” he said. For Lovitch, his world record meant investing 350 hours in administrative work detailing the design and work behind his gingerbread buildings.

For 2022, Lovtich was commissioned to make three different displays at the Essex Market in New York, The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures in Kansas City, Missouri and Leonardo Science Museum in Salt Lake City. He estimates the three villages total about 3,000 hours of work.

The New York City display contains over 700 houses and, when fully complete, Lovitch says the display will be about 65% of the size of his Guiness World Record village. 

Even though Lovitch invests countless hours into designing and constructing his displays, he says it is all worth it, particularly when he sees the joy it brings to visitors, noting that the New York City display draws major crowds on the weekends.

“It’s truly the best part," he said of the public enjoying his work. "That’s the part that I enjoy the most. It’s the part I wait for the whole year and the part I can’t recreate until the actual exhibit is open."

When the holiday season ends, Lovitch gives the houses inside Gingerbread Village out to the public to take home.  However, he is appalled when people's first instinct is to eat these year-old houses.

“Everything in here is really old gingerbread and frosting… sometimes I’ll watch them and they’re licking and gnawing at it, and I’m just like, 'Why?'” said Lovitch.

It takes all year to make these gingerbread villages and said he is already thinking about starting the ones for 2023.   

“You wouldn’t run a holiday business if you don’t enjoy it, or if you did, you're doing it wrong.  For me, I love it and enjoy every minute of it,” said Lovitch.

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