Bowery (Manhattan)

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The Bowery, looking south from East 4th Street

The Bowery is a small neighborhood in southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its 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 Bowery (the street) and Little Italy to the west (citidex.com 2006) (Fodor's 1991).

Bowery as a street was known as Bowery Lane prior to 1807 (Brown, 1922) and was the road leading to Peter Stuyvesant's farm or bouwerij. Today it runs from Chatham Square in the south to Astor Place in the north.

1 History
2 Depression and Revival
3 CBGB
4 Bowery Poetry Club
5 Famous residents
6 Sources
7 References
8 External links

[edit] History

The Bowery, looking north, around 1910

Bouwerij was the old Dutch word for farm, (today boerderij). Stuyvesant retired to his 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 (Fodor's 2004).

The Bull's Head Tavern is noted for George Washington having stopped there to refresh himself before riding down to the waterfront to witness the departure of British troops in 1783.

By the end of the 18th century The Bowery became New York's most elegant street, lined with fashionable shops and the mansions of prosperous residents. Lorenzo Da Ponte, the Librettist for Mozart's Don Giovanni, Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi Fan Tutte, ran one of the shops - a fruit and vegetable store - after he emigrated to New York City in 1806. But by the time of the Civil War, the mansions and shops had given way to brothels, beer gardens, and flophouses, like the one at #15 in which the composer Stephen Foster lived in 1864^[1]. It had also become the turf of one of America's earliest street gangs, the nativist Bowery Boys.

[edit] Depression and Revival

Luxury lofts are replacing soup kitchens

Home of many music halls in the 19th century, the Bowery later became notable for its economic depression. In the 1920s and 1930s, it was regarded as an impoverished area. The "Dead End Kids" (aka the "Bowery Boys") of film were from the Bowery. In the 1940s through the 1970s, the Bowery was New York City's "Skid Row," notable for "Bowery Bums" (alcoholics and homeless persons).

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Bowery was viewed as a high crime, low rent area. However, 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.

The Bowery is rapidly developing

Michael Dominic's documentary film Sunshine Hotel (2001) follows the lives of the denizens of one of the few remaining Bowery flophouses.

Major streets that intersect the Bowery include Canal Street, Delancey Street (at which corner the subway station named Bowery is situated), Houston Street, and Bleecker Street.

[edit] 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 and 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 as a result and brought a new national fame to the Bowery. CBGB closed on October 31, 2006, after a long battle by club owner Hilly Kristal to extend its lease. Fittingly, Patti Smith—the first of the CBGB-supported performers to sign a major recording contract three decades earlier—played the club's final show on October 15.

[edit] 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 Cafe Poetry Slam MC (1988-1996). The BPC features regular shows by Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll, along with open mic, queer poets, a weekly poetry slam, and an Emily Dickinson Marathon, amongst other events.

[edit] Famous residents

Among other famous residents, the Bowery was home to Quentin Crisp, who lived there for the last two decades of his life.

The professional wrestler Raven is also introduced as residing in the Bowery.

New York School poet Ted Berrigan mentions the Bowery several times in his seminal work, "The Sonnets."

[edit] 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