Bowery

The Bowery is one in the south of Manhattan (New York ), this street and its surroundings. The boundaries of the area by the East 4th Street and the East Village to the north, the. Canal Street and Chinatown to the south, by the Allen Street and the Lower East Side to the east and by the road Bowery and Little Italy to the west Larger streets that intersect the Bowery, in addition to Canal Street, Delancey Street, at the Bowery station of the New York City Subway is located, as well as the Houston Street and Bleecker Street.

History

Today's Wall Street north - - Farms To supply Nieuw Amsterdam with food, originated outside the city limits. According to the old Dutch name for farm Bouwerij (now boerderij ) received the area its name. By the year 1807, Bowery was only one road that leads today from Chatham Square in the south to Cooper Square in the north.

Peter Stuyvesant Again, had his farm, on which he withdrew in 1667. After his death in 1672 he was buried in his private chapel. His estate was burned down in 1778 and his great- grandson sold the remaining chapel and the cemetery, which now belongs to St. Mark's Church in-the- Bowery.

In 1783, George Washington made ​​in the Bull's Head Tavern rest, just before he watched the abandonment of British troops in the port of New York. Towards the end of the 18th century, the Bowery became one of the most elegant streets of New York, lined with fashion shops and property of rich merchants. Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, entertained here after his emigration in 1806, a fruit and vegetable shop.

In the 19th century, the Bowery as well as the neighboring Five Points became a slum area with brothels, beer gardens and dodgy. Alcoholics and homeless people, the so-called Bowery Bums, populated the area. The well-known songwriter Stephen Foster died in 1864 penniless in North American hotel. Gangs such as the Bowery Boys roamed here. Thus, the district got its bad reputation, it is still not quite gotten rid of.

Until the 1980s into the Bowery was considered a neighborhood with low rents and high crime rate. The street scene was dominated by Flop Houses called homeless shelters, usually set up in the former hotel, as well as specialty stores for restaurant supplies.

But institutions of the subculture as the music club CBGB and the Bowery Poetry Club found their home here. In 1981 lived in the Bowery, the British author and eccentric Quentin Crisp, which the pop singer Sting after a visit to his apartment the song Englishman in New York devoted. From 1991 to 2010, the Ontological Theatre director and playwright Richard Foreman resided under the roof of St. Mark's Church.

Since the 1990s, the neighborhood undergoes gentrification. Houses are repaired, and the Bowery is increasingly becoming a residential area for the wealthy. In 1997, the Bowery Ballroom was opened. In the rooms of the former CBGB punk clubs established in 2008 with an exclusive men's boutique of fashion designer John Varvatos. In 2007 was opened at the height of Prince Street, the New Museum of Contemporary Art. In the fall of 2010, settled in the Bowery several art galleries, so the Dodge Gallery, which moved from Boston in the Rivington Street. Other examples are Sperone Westwater designed by Norman Foster with a house and the gallery Untitled.

Reception

• In 1956, the documentary film On the Bowery, which describes the lives of the people at this time in the Bowery emerged.
• 1969/70 created Duane Hanson 's sculptures group Bowery Derelicts, a work on homelessness and poverty.