Windows On The Bowery

The Bowery, first traversed on foot by Native Americans over unknown centuries, remains New York City’s oldest thoroughfare and stretches 1.25 miles from Chatham Square to Cooper Square. Across 400 years of Euro-American history, it has become the city’s most architecturally diverse and historically significant streetscape, with buildings representing every decade since 1780. It began as a colonial Dutch bouwerij, or farm, road and was later the site of Manhattan’s first Free Black settlement, George Washington’s Revolution-era procession route, a center of 19th century Irish-American political influence and German-American culture, and the place of Lincoln’s famous anti-slavery speech. Since the early 1800s it has been New York’s first entertainment district and has incubated American cultural expressions including tap dance, minstrelsy, vaudeville, jazz, Abstract Expressionism, Beat literature, and punk rock. In the 19th century it was frequented by the working class, the Bowery Boys gang, gay New Yorkers, and waves of Irish, Italian, Chinese, German, and Jewish immigrants. Since the 20th century, it has served as a jewelry, lighting, and restaurant supply district, a base for the homeless, and a live-work space for an influential community of cutting-edge artists. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, it remains one of the country’s most endangered historic places despite broad support for preservation.

New York, New York · United States