Community History

How The Bowery helped birth New York City

By Olivia Rimpel

Before it became the oldest roadway in New York City, the 1.25-mile-long Bowery Street was a trail for Lenape traders and travelers. The most storied buildings would later include havens for Black people who’d escaped slavery or gave birth to vaudeville and places that became the earliest cultural hubs for LGBTQ New Yorkers.

Today, those 16 blocks stretching from Chatham Square to Cooper Square remain a destination for history buffs — and for those who fear the district’s legacy is under threat.

“It helps you understand the best parts of American history and also the worst parts of it- both are equally important. This whole street can help you understand that,” said Ramona Baker,  who leads walking tours of the Bowery and neighboring Chinatown.

Working-class immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy and China — the now-defunct Chinese Exclusion Act kept even Chinese-born Asians from being citizens and restricted where they could live — largely shaped the earliest face and culture of the Bowery. 

Baker says that without the 400-year-old corridor, New York would lose much of its social history.

Threats to those 16 blocks are not new, said retired history teacher and author David Mulkins, chair of the  Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, a  grassroots nonprofit dedicated to protecting the area’s small businesses and historic character. 

The Bowery is on the National Register of Historic Places, and some areas, like the western side and the area north of Houston Street, are protected. However, the 2008 East Village/Lower East Side Rezoning plan left parts of the neighborhood vulnerable to developers whose projects displace residents who can’t afford the higher prices. 

“This used to be an artists’ district, but a lot of them just don’t live here anymore. They can’t,” Baker said.

“Sensible cities like Paris,” Mulkins said, “preserve and protect their most historically, culturally important streets and enact zoning laws that help keep the low-rise character. Not so in New York City, where the Bowery remains in danger of being … bulldozed out of existence.”

Before there was Broadway, The Bowery Theatre anchored Manhattan’s first entertainment hub. When Broadway was established as a larger market, audiences started seeing performances in Midtown. The theater, now neglected, burned down in 1929. It was never rebuilt. 

By the 1960s, the area and many of its people slid into poverty and sometimes, homelessness and substance abuse. The Bowery turned into  New York’s Skid Row. Rent, at an all-time low, cost as little as $100 per month. 

The low rent attracted artists to The Bowery’s lofts and other living spaces. Punk rockers thrived at accepting scenes like CBGB’s, an iconic music club established in the 70s that’s still open.

CBGB, said Mulkins, author of “The Bowery (Images of America),” was “a laboratory of musical innovation.”

In the 1990s, hotels and restaurants flooded southern Manhattan. Many small businesses shut down and rent shot up to $650 or even $800.

The East Bowery Preservation Plan, championed by the Alliance of Neighbors and designed by preservationist Doris Diether, aimed to prevent the Bowery’s erasure. That 2009 zoning proposal, which wasn’t implemented, sought to curb overdevelopment by making sure no buildings were taller than 84 feet. That’s the cap for the West Bowery. 

“The biggest hurdle has been having an unsympathetic Landmarks Preservation Commission chair or an unsympathetic city council member,” Mulkins said.

Mulkins argues that powerful real estate lobbies like the Real Estate Board of New York sway city elections and block property landmarking. Since the mayor appoints the head of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the agency’s preservation decisions ultimately mirror the mayor’s own agenda. 

For Baker, the Bowery is more than just where she works.

“This is actually part of the reason I moved here,” said Baker, who relocated to New York from San Francisco three years ago. 

She’d first visited Bowery eight years ago. “I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this is it, this is the place. This is the sacred space where all these musicians and performers and artists and everyone got their start … .”.

The history buff’s eyes got misty. The Bowery was a melting pot within the proverbial melting pot of New York City. 

“That’s really what the United States’ conscience is,” she said. “It’s not in Washington, it’s here.”