SNAPSHOT
DESPICABLE AND BRILLIANT
IF THE BOWERY WERE TO BE featured in New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix, it would be located at the origin—the thoroughfare is as lowbrow as it is highbrow, as despicable as it is brilliant. In the 17th century, the Bowery connected the city at the south of the island (New Amsterdam) with the “suburbs,” where estates and their farms punctuated the street. In 1654, a group of freed slaves settled on the Bowery, juxtaposing the European wealth and thereby establishing a precedent of high-low culture. By the 1800s, there existed a riotous rivalry between the Bowery Boys (the nativist gang) and the Dead Rabbits (the immigrant gang) as well as an Astor presence—which began when Henry Astor (brother of John Jacob Astor) purchased the Bull’s Head market on the Bowery. After the Civil War, the area catered to soldiers, which encouraged activities such 160 QUEST
as drinking, gambling, and prostitution. McGurk’s Saloon at 295 Bowery represented the area’s abyss, as it was where the most “down and out” in the community went to commit suicide—in 1899, there were six deaths and seven failed attempts at death. Theodore Roosevelt, in 1913, declared, “What infinite use Dante would have made of the Bowery!” Today, the area is revived. Starting with CBGB in the Seventies, the Bowery has experienced gentrification, visible in B Bar then Daniel Boulud’s DBGB, Keith McNally’s Pulino’s, and the Bowery Hotel. That said, the Bowery maintains the ability to house and entertain members of the upper, middle, and lower classes and, perhaps, continues to elicit a playful darkness from all. —Elizabeth Quinn Brown This page: The Bowery, circa 1900, with the Third Avenue El train (above); below, from left: the Bowery in 1888; 1960; 1975; and 2013.