Birthplace of Modern Tattooing!

The Bowery and Chatham Square became a center of modern tattooing through the work of Samuel O’Reilly and Charlie Wagner. O’Reilly patented the first electric tattooing machine in 1891 and built his reputation at 11 Chatham Square. After O’Reilly died in 1908, his student Wagner took over there. Known as the “Michelangelo of Tattoo,” Wagner patented his own tattoo machine in 1904 with the same alignment many machines still use today, rented space at 208 and 223 Bowery, and worked at 11 Chatham Square until his death in 1953. Other Bowery tattoo artists, including some of Wagner’s protégés, were Willie Moscowitz and Al Neville at 4 and 12 Bowery, Lame Leroy at 15 Bowery, Apache Harry at 22 Bowery, and Moscowitz’s sons Stanley and Walter at 52 Bowery. Mildred Hull, called “New York’s only lady tattooist,” was raised on the Bowery, had been an exotic circus dancer, learned tattooing from Wagner after he began tattooing her, and opened her Tattoo Emporium in 1939 inside a barber shop at 16 Bowery. Tattooers worked on the Bowery until New York City banned tattooing in 1961, and it was not legalized again until 1997.

New York, New York · United States