Down in The Bowery

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/nyregion/on-the-bowery-vestiges-of-a seedy-past-through.html?_r=0

The Bowery, that place in Lower Manhattan that evokes so much history dating back to the pre-Colonial period.  This 1.25 mile area between Chatham Square and Cooper Square listed on the National Register of Historic Places (http://www.preservationnation.org) on February 20, 2013  and described by Kerri Culhane, an architectural historian and associate director of the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council (http://www.twobridges.org), as "the city oldest streetscape."  Major streets that intersect the Bowery are Canal Street, Delancey Street, Houston Street (pronounced Howston), and Bleecker Street.  All fabled streets.  The neighborhood boundaries are: Canal Street and the famous Chinatown to the south; East 4th Street and the East Village to the north; Allen Street and the Lower East Side to the east; and the equally famous Little Italy to the west.  All places that bring forth some wonderful and romantic louche images that so much a part of New York City's rich history.  Despite the wave of gentrification, traces of the block's seedy past remains.  Most of the area's fabled past has been obliterated but the bones of the nearly 200 buildings remain.  So what is it about this storied area that attracted so much interested?  Let's go to the history.

Bowery or more commonly, "the Bowery" and less commonly, "Bowery Street," is the anglicization of the Dutch word bouwerij, coming from the antique word for "farm."  In the seventeenth century, the road branched off Broadway, north of Fort Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan to the homestead of Director-General of New Netherlands Peter Stuyvesant.  During the Colonial and Federal period, the Bowery was home to mansions and respectable businesses.  In 1826, the first slippage from respectability occurred with the opening of the Bowery Theatre on the site of The Bull's Head Tavern, purchased by John Jacob Astor.  Eventually, the mansions and shops gave way to low-brow concert hall, brothels, beer gardens, pawn shops, and flophouses.  By the late nineteenth century, the Bowery became a center for prostitution and bars catering to lesbians and homosexuals.  The area remained in a fallow state until the 1990s when it began to revive with the coming of gentrification.  Some of the notable establishments in the Bowery are: Amato Opera, Bowery Savings, Bowery Ballroom, the late and lamented CBGB, Bowery Poetry Club, New Museum, and Peanut Gallery.  In October 2011, the Bowery was placed on New York State Register of Historic Places and automatically nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.  Two grassroots organizations, the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors (BAN http://www.boweryalliance.org) and the community based housing organization Two Bridges Neighborhood Council led the designation charge which resulted in National Register designation this year.

So what's happening down in the Bowery today?  Plenty apparently.  Preservationists are button holing the New York City Planning Commission to extend some of the zoning protections against new obtrusive buildings on the west and east sides of the streets.  Author Luc Sante and director and Bowery native Martin Scorsese wrote testimony supporting the extension, siting the historic and aesthetic significance of the area.  Mr. Scorsese argued that high-rise apartments and condominiums would create more chaos and disruption, ultimately offering the Bowery up to elements of conformity.  Currently, about a dozen sites on the Bowery are protected by the New York City Landmarks Commission including the three-story red-brick Edward Mooney House at No. 18 (c.1785), believed to be the oldest existing brick row house in the city and the Bowery Savings Bank, No. 130, built by Stanford White.  The register includes No. 40-42, a Federal-style row house (c. 1807) acquired by Henry Astor in 1822.  No. 46-48, currently a Chinese restaurant was once Bull's Head Tavern. and No. 101 was the former location of Worth's Museum of Living Curiosities and so forth.  The point here is that this is a district that is so steeped in New York and New York City history that the idea of hipsterification seems an anathema.

Martin Scorese is correct when he asserted that the introduction of high-rises and condominiums would add element of conformity to area that has so defiantly resisted conformity its entire life.  There are signs of hipsterification already creeping into the area.  The ubiquitous Whole Foods Market and the hallowed punk rock grounds CBGB has been turned into a designer clothing shop.  People, let's remember that you can't have a Gap/Banana Republic/Whole Foods et cetera everywhere.  Malls are fine in their own context but not in historic districts.  You could argue that the introduction of upscale housing and and businesses would bring new revenue into the area.  Yes that could happen but at what price?  How do you balance the historically significant character defining features of places like the Bowery or Wyvernwood against further development?  This is an issue that continues to plague cities as we become more urbanized.  The stripping away of layers of history in favor of newer and not necessarily better.