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* [[New York School]] poet [[Ted Berrigan]] mentions the Bowery several times in his seminal work "The Sonnets".
* [[New York School]] poet [[Ted Berrigan]] mentions the Bowery several times in his seminal work "The Sonnets".
* The [[Wild Cards]] series of books sets the Bowery as [[Jokertown]], the place where the malformed go to live after the [[Wild Card Virus]] is released over New York.
* The [[Wild Cards]] series of books sets the Bowery as [[Jokertown]], the place where the malformed go to live after the [[Wild Card Virus]] is released over New York.
* Barbara Coultas's book "[[A Handmade Museum]]" (poetry, published in 2003 by Coffee House Press) contains a section called "The Bowery Project" and documents the pre-gentrification process.
* Barbara Coultas's book ''A Handmade Museum'' (poetry, published in 2003 by Coffee House Press) contains a section called "The Bowery Project" and documents the pre-gentrification process.


===Film, stage and TV===
===Film, stage and TV===

Revision as of 16:51, 17 April 2012

40°43′11.62″N 73°59′38.86″W / 40.7198944°N 73.9941278°W / 40.7198944; -73.9941278

For other uses, see Bowery (disambiguation).
Looking north from Houston Street up Bowery, with the Empire State Building in the background
The Bowery, looking north from Grand Street, around 1910

Bowery (/[invalid input: 'icon']ˈbaʊ.əri/ or locally /ˈbaʊ.ri/), commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood's boundaries are East 4th Street and the East Village to the north, Canal Street and Chinatown to the South, Allen Street and the Lower East Side to the east and Little Italy to the west.[1]

Bowery is an anglicisation of the Dutch bouwerij, derived from an antiquated Dutch word for "farm." In the 17th century the road branched off Broadway north of Fort Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan to the homestead of Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland. As a street, the Bowery was known as Bowery Lane prior to 1807.[2] Today it runs from Chatham Square in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north. After Cooper Square, the street runs north as Third Avenue and to the northwest as Fourth Avenue.

Major streets that intersect the Bowery include Canal Street, Delancey Street, Houston Street, and Bleecker Street. A New York City Subway station named Bowery on the BMT Nassau Street Line (J and Z services) is located at the Bowery's intersection with Delancey Street.

Colonial and federal period

The Bowery is the oldest thoroughfare on Manhattan Island, preceding European intervention as a Lenape footpath, which spanned roughly the entire length of the island, from north to south.[3] When the Dutch settled Manhattan island, they named the path Bouwerij road — "bouwerij" being an old Dutch word for "farm" — [4] because it connected farmlands and estates on the outskirts to the heart of the city in today's Wall Street/Battery Park area.

In 1654, the Bowery’s first residents settled in the area of Chatham Square; ten freed slaves and their wives set up cabins and a cattle farm.

Petrus Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam before the English took control, retired to his Bowery farm in 1667. After his death in 1672, he was buried in his private chapel. His mansion burned down in 1778 and his great-grandson sold the remaining chapel and graveyard, now the site of the Episcopal church of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.[5]

The Bowery (unmarked), leading to the "Road to Kings Bridge, where the Rebels mean to make a Stand" in a British map of 1776
File:Bowery Theatre, New York City.jpg
Cigarette trading card featuring the Bowery Theatre; a few 3½-storey structures of the 1830s (like the building at right) remain on the Bowery today

In her Journal of 1704–1705, Sarah Kemble Knight describes the Bowery as a leisure destination for residents of New York City in December:

Their Diversions in the Winter is Riding Sleys about three or four Miles out of Town, where they have Houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, and some go to friends Houses who handsomely treat them. [...] I believe we mett 50 or 60 slays that day—they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they'le turn out of the path for none except a Loaden Cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, they'r Tables being as free to their Naybours as to themselves.

By 1766, when John Montresor made his detailed plan of New York,[6] "Bowry Lane", which took a more north-tending track at the rope walk, was lined for the first few streets with buildings that formed a solid frontage, with market gardens behind them; when Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist for Mozart's Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi Fan Tutte, emigrated to New York City in 1806, he briefly ran one of the shops along the Bowery, a fruit and vegetable store. In 1766, straight lanes led away at right angles to gentlemen's seats, mostly well back from the dusty "Road to Albany and Boston", as it was labeled on Montresor's map; Nicholas Bayard's was planted as an avenue of trees. James Delancey's grand house, flanked by matching outbuildings, stood behind a forecourt facing Bowery Lane; behind it was his parterre garden, ending in an exedra, clearly delineated on the map.

The Bull's Head Tavern was noted for George Washington having stopped there for refreshment before riding down to the waterfront to witness the departure of British troops in 1783. Leading to the Post Road, The Bowery rivalled Broadway as a thoroughfare; as late as 1869, when it had gained the "reputation of cheap trade, without being disreputable" it was still "the second principal street of the city".[7]

When Lafayette Street was opened parallel to The Bowery in the 1820s, the Bowery Theatre was founded by rich families on the site of the Red Bull Tavern, which had been purchased by John Jacob Astor; it opened in 1826. Across the way the Bowery Amphitheatre was erected in 1833, specializing in the more populist entertainments of equestrian shows and circuses. From stylish beginnings, the tone of the Bowery Theatre's offerings matched the slide in the social scale of the Bowery itself.

Slide from respectability

By the time of the Civil War, the mansions and shops had given way to low-brow concert halls, brothels, German beer gardens, pawn shops, and flophouses, like the one at No.15 in which the composer Stephen Foster lived in 1864[8] Theodore Dreiser closed his tragedy Sister Carrie, set in the 1890s, with the suicide of one of the main characters in a Bowery flophouse. The Bowery, which marked the eastern border of the slum of "Five Points", had also become the turf of one of America's earliest street gangs, the nativist Bowery Boys. In the spirit of social reform, the first YMCA opened on the Bowery in 1873;[9] another notable religious and social welfare institution established during this period was Bowery Mission, which was founded in 1880 at 36 Bowery by Reverend Albert Gleason Ruliffson. The mission has relocated along the Bowery throughout its lifetime. From 1909 to the present, the mission has remained at 227-229 Bowery.

By the 1890s, The Bowery was a center for prostitution that rivaled the Tenderloin, and for bars catering to gay men and some lesbians at various social levels, from The Slide at 157 Bleecker Street, New York's "worst dive",[10] to Columbia Hall at 5th Street, called Paresis Hall. One investigator in 1899 found six saloons and dance halls, the resorts of "degenerates" and "fairies", on The Bowery alone.[11] Gay subculture was more highly visible there and more integrated into working-class male culture than it was to become in the following generations, according to the historian of gay New York, George Chauncey.

Berenice Abbott photograph of a Bowery restaurant in 1935, when the street was lined with flophouses.

From 1878 to 1955 the Third Avenue El ran above the Bowery, further darkening its streets, populated largely by men. "It is filled with employment agencies, cheap clothing and knickknack stores, cheap moving-picture shows, cheap lodging-houses, cheap eating-houses, cheap saloons", writers in The Century Magazine found it in 1919. "Here, too, by the thousands come sailors on shore leave,—notice the 'studios' of the tattoo artists,—and here most in evidence are the 'down and outs'".[12] Prohibition eliminated The Bowery's numerous saloons: One Mile House, the "stately old tavern... replaced by a cheap saloon"[13] at the southeast corner of Rivington Street, named for the battered milestone across the way,[14] where the politicians of the East Side had made informal arrangements for the city's governance, [15][16] was renovated for retail space in 1921, "obliterating all vestiges of its former appearance", The New York Times reported. Restaurant supply stores were among the businesses that had come to the Bowery,[17] and many remain to this day.

Luxury lofts and soup kitchens jockey for space as the neighborhood's rapid gentrification continues.

Pressure for a new name after World War I came to naught[17] and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was as an impoverished area. In the 1940s through the 1970s, the Bowery was New York City's "Skid Row," notable for "Bowery Bums" (disaffiliated alcoholics and homeless persons).[18]

Revival

Since the 1990s the entire Lower East Side has been reviving. As of July 2005, gentrification is contributing to ongoing change along the Bowery. In particular, the number of high-rise condominiums is growing. In 2006, AvalonBay Communities opened its first luxury apartment complex on the Bowery, which included an upscale Whole Foods Market. Avalon Bowery Place was quickly followed with the development of Avalon Bowery Place II in 2007. That same year, the SANAA-designed facility for the New Museum of Contemporary Art opened at the corner of Prince Street.

The new development has not come without a social cost. Michael Dominic's documentary Sunshine Hotel followed the lives of residents of one of the few remaining flophouses.

The Bowery from Houston to Delancey Streets serves as New York's principal market for restaurant equipment, and from Delancey to Grand for lamps.

Bowery historic district

In October 2011, a Bowery Historic District was registered with the New York State Register of Historic Places and, because of that, automatically nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. A grassroots community organization named the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors (BAN) in association with the community-based housing organization called the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council led the effort for creation of the historic district. The designation means that property owners will have financial incentives to restore rather than demolish old buildings on the Bowery. [19]

The historic district runs from Chatham Square to Astor Place on both sides of the Bowery.

Notable establishments

Avalon Bowery Place, one of several new luxury developments on the Bowery.

An avant garde art movement and the underground gallery that fronts its activities off the Bowery.

Bank buildings

The Bowery Savings Bank was chartered in May 1834, when the Bowery was an upscale residential street, and grew with the rising prosperity of the city. Its 1893 headquarters building remains a Bowery landmark, as does the 1920s domed Citizens Savings Bank.[20]

New Museum

Main article: New Museum

In December 2007, the New Museum opened the doors to its new location on 235 Bowery, at Prince Street, continuing its focus of exhibiting emerging international artists. This new facility, designed by the Tokyo-based firm Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA and the New York-based firm Gensler, has greatly expanded the Museum’s exhibitions and space. In March 2008, the museum's new building was named one of the architectural seven wonders by Conde Nast Traveler.[21] The museum has an ongoing Bowery Project honoring artists who lived on the Bowery with taped interviews and archived records. [22]

Amato Opera

Main article: Amato Opera

This company, which was founded in 1948 by Tony Amato and his wife, Sally, found a permanent home at 319 Bowery next to the former CBGB, and it afforded many young singers the opportunity to hone their craft in full-length productions with a cut-down orchestration. The curtain fell on this well-established opera forum in NYC on May 31, 2009, when Tony Amato retired.

CBGB

CBGB, a club initially opened to play country, bluegrass & blues (as the name CBGB stands for), began to book Television, Patti Smith, and the Ramones as house bands in the mid-1970s. This spawned a full-blown scene of new bands (Talking Heads, Blondie, edgy R&B-influenced Mink DeVille, rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, and others) performing mostly original material in a mostly raw and often loud and fast attack. The label of punk rock was applied to the scene even if not all the bands that made their early reputations at the club were punk rockers, strictly speaking, but CBGB became known as the American cradle of punk rock. CBGB closed on October 31, 2006, after a long battle by club owner Hilly Kristal to extend its lease.

Bowery Ballroom

Main article: Bowery Ballroom

The Bowery Ballroom is a music venue. The structure, at 6 Delancey Street, was built just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it became a high-end retail store. The neighborhood subsequently went into decline again, and so did the caliber of businesses occupying the space.[citation needed] In 1997 it was converted into a music venue.

Right in front of the venue's entrance is the Bowery Station (J and ​Z trains) of the New York City Subway.

The club serves as the namesake of at least one recording: Joan Baez's Bowery Songs album, recorded live at a concert at the Bowery Ballroom in November 2004.

Bowery Poetry Club

Bowery Poetry Club

The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space. Located at Bowery and Bleecker Street in Lower Manhattan, the BPC provides a home base for established and upcoming artists. It was founded by Bob Holman, owner of the building and former Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Slam MC (1988–1996). The BPC features regular shows by Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman, Taylor Mead, along with open mic, gay poets, a weekly poetry slam, and an Emily Dickinson Marathon, amongst other events.

Famous residents

Among other famous residents, Quentin Crisp lived on Third Street near Second Avenue, and near the Bowery, for the last two decades of his life. Béla Bartók lived in 350 Bowery at the corner of Great Jones Street during the 1940s.

The writer William S. Burroughs kept an apartment at the former YMCA building at 222 Bowery, known as the Bunker, from 1974 until his death in 1997.[23] Mark Rothko, the Abstract Expressionist painter, had a studio on the Bowery. Pop artist Tom Wesselman had a studio on the Bowery in the building now adjacent to the New Museum.

The artist Cy Twombly lived on the 3rd floor of 356 Bowery during the 1960s.

The founder of the Hare Krishna Movement, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada lived in the Bowery when the movement began in America in 1966.

Punk singer Joey Ramone resided in the area, and in 2003 a part of Second Street at the intersection Bowery and Second Street was renamed Joey Ramone Place.[24][25]

Literature

  • The Bowery is the setting for Stephen Crane's first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (published in 1893), about a poor family living in the neighborhood
  • New York School poet Ted Berrigan mentions the Bowery several times in his seminal work "The Sonnets".
  • The Wild Cards series of books sets the Bowery as Jokertown, the place where the malformed go to live after the Wild Card Virus is released over New York.
  • Barbara Coultas's book A Handmade Museum (poetry, published in 2003 by Coffee House Press) contains a section called "The Bowery Project" and documents the pre-gentrification process.

Film, stage and TV

Steve Brodie's bar at 114 Bowery
Sheet Music to The Bowery, 1892

Art

  • The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, a collection of photographs and poems by Martha Rosler. [26]

Music

The 1891 musical comedy A Trip to Chinatown featured The Bowery, a song that became highly popular in that era.

Over the years, the Bowery has been mentioned in the lyrics of a number of songs, including the Bob Dylan song "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", from the album Bringing It All Back Home (1965) -- "I walked by a Guernsey cow/Who directed me down/To the Bowery slums/Where people carried signs around/Saying, 'Ban the bums.'"

The street has also been mentioned in songs by Willie Nile, Jim Croce, Regina Spektor, Dire Straits, Bill Callahan, Saint Etienne the Vancouver Twee pop band cub, Sonic Youth, Two Gallants, Steve Earle, Beastie Boys, Paul McDermott, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, Ryan Adams, The Clash, the Ramones, Jesse Malin and The Foetus All-Nude Revue, Deerhunter among others.

The Bowery is mentioned as a place where love and gin can be found in the lyrics of Stephin Merritt's song "Love is Like a Bottle of Gin" from the album 69 Love Songs.

See also

References

Sources
  • Fodor's flashmaps New York, 1991
  • Fodor's See It New York City, 2004, [ISBN 1-4000-1387-9]
  • Valentine's Manual of Old New York / No. 7, Ed. Henry Collins Brown, Pub. Valentine's Manual Inc. 1922
Notes
  1. ^ (citidex.com 2006) (Fodor's 1991)
  2. ^ (Brown, 1922)
  3. ^ Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New york City, 2009, p. 107, illus. "Lenape sites and trails", and Ch. 4 "The Lenape", passim.
  4. ^ In modern Dutch, boerderij.
  5. ^ (Fodor's 2004)
  6. ^ The relevant section is illustrated in Sanderson 2009, p. 41, bottom.
  7. ^ Matthew Hale Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York, 1869, p.214.
  8. ^ Moscow, Henry (1978). The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins. New York: Hagstrom Company. ISBN 978-0-8232-1275-0.; A highly-colored and disapproving panorama of the dissolute and lively Bowery on a Sunday is offered by Smith 1869, pp 214-18.
  9. ^ David Levinson, ed. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Homelessness, s.v. "Bowery, The".
  10. ^ George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940: ch. 1 "The Bowery as haven and spectacle", (1994:32-45) p.37.
  11. ^ Chauncey 1994:33.
  12. ^ Mary Frank and John Foster Carr, "Exploring a neighborhood", The Century Magazine 98 (July 1919:378).
  13. ^ Frank and Carr 1919:378; the old tavern had been the scene of at least one violent murder, in 1862 ("The Murder in the Bowery", New York Times, 4 November 1862 accessed 14 March 2010.
  14. ^ The stone marked a mile from City hall; it was still in evidence in 1909 (Frank Bergen Kelly, Historical Guide to the City of New York (City History Club of New York), 1909:97.
  15. ^ "Bowery Landmark in $170,000 Lease". The New York Times. April 1, 1921. p. 32. Retrieved 2010-03-14.
  16. ^ One Mile House by Glenn O. Coleman, 1928 (Whitney Museum of American Art) epitomizes the scene. A ghostly painted sign on the side of the building still advertises One Mile House.
  17. ^ a b "Business Changes Along the Bowery". The New York Times. December 11, 1921. p. 125. Retrieved 2010-07-11. Today, the gentrified designation "Cooper Square" extends down The Bowery as far as 4th Street.
  18. ^ Benedict Giamo, On the Bowery: confronting homelessness in American Society (University of Iowa Press) 1989.
  19. ^ Clark, Roger (25 October 2011). "Bowery Lands Spot On State Historic Registry". NY1.com. Retrieved 26 October 2011.
  20. ^ "New Bank Building; Citizens Savings Bank to Erect Monumental Structure on Bowery". The New York Times. July 2, 1922. p. 84. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  21. ^ Associated Press (2008-03-30). "Structures Considered Most Amazing in World". The News Leader. Retrieved 2008-03-30. [dead link]
  22. ^ Bowery Artist Tribute Bowery Artist Tribute
  23. ^ thing.net
  24. ^ "He Had the Beat -- and Now Has a Street". The Washington Post. December 7, 2003. Retrieved 2007-08-02. Now there is Joey Ramone Place.... The sign bearing Ramone's name recently went up on the corner of East Second Street and the Bowery, near CBGB, the group's musical home.
  25. ^ Gamboa, Glenn (August 10, 2005). "The Fold: Battle over punk birthplace: Rock & rent". Newsday. Retrieved 2007-08-02. Reminders of the bands who have passed through CBGB remain all around the club, from the corner of the Bowery and 2nd Street - now renamed Joey Ramone Place - to the countless band names scrawled on the bathroom walls.
  26. ^ "The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems". The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems. The New Museum.
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