Convergence on Bowery

Think Coffee 2 PM. 50°F. March 1st , 2009. Here I am, sitting in a coffee shop located on New York City’s Bowery. I’m seated near the entrance, and I can’t help but notice the different types of people that enter through the door—From the Plain Janes to the Fancy Nancys, from the bums to the Business Men….Suits/sweats….Stilettos/sneakers…Prada Bag/trash bag….It made me wonder, are they all locals to the Bowery? From my seat, I can peer out the large windows and see a four story, graffitied brick building to my left; the oldest looking building on the block. The next building to the right is NYU’s Second Street Dormitory. To the right of that building, the Amato Opera, one of the oldest Operas in New York City. To the right of that building, a BRC homeless shelter. To the right of that, a John Varvatos, which is a high-end, men’s clothing store, then a Chase Bank, and then finally, the brand new Avalon condominiums. It’s the tallest building on the block, with eight stories, and is certainly the priciest place to live on the block, if not all of the Bowery.

Avalon certainly stands out among the rest of the buildings mentioned, but not only because of its height but its modern, glass make-up; a complete contrast from the rest of the buildings that are made of brick and are painted in autumn shades. Clearly, with this block’s arrangement, the diversity I mention is not out of question. Think Coffee Petition to Save the Bowery The other day I came across a mini poster with the words “Save the Bowery” in bold at the top. Below this headline, the poster read: “The new luxury buildings and hotels will further destroy the quality of life for all of us living in the vicinity. There will be more traffic, more noise, more sidewalk congestion, more air pollution, etc. The low-rise character of the Bowery is being replaced by high-rise dormitories, boutique hotels and luxury buildings which are out-of-scale with the rest of the residential community, including the historic NOHO District.

In addition to preservation issues, this development will have a horrendous effect on the "quality of life" for community residents - more noise, traffic, sidewalk and street congestion, air pollution, bars, clubs, etc. What was a commercial "daytime" shopping strip is quickly turning into a raucous nightlife district.” As a resident of the Bowery, I was intrigued, so I decided to do some research online to find out how active this “fight to save the Bowery” really was. I came across multiple online petitions and blogs, all trying to save the Bowery from over development”. New Development on the Bowery Bowery History One site, run by LINA, The Little Italy Neighbors Association, presented the history of the Bowery including photographs and drawings of the historical town, to help evoke nostalgia for the threatened community: The BoweryLow Life, Luc Sante's social history of down-and-out New York, chronicles the Bowery’s long and glorious decline. Describing the street as "the proverbial den of all vices . . . the capital of dissipation . . . the main street of the lower classes . . . the forum of the slums . . . the last stop on the way down," he notes that, among the Bowery’s distinctions, it is the city's only major thoroughfare never to have harbored a church.

The Bowery, from the Dutch word, bouwerij, or farm, which now borders Little Italy to the east, running a mile from Chatham Square to Cooper Square, began as an Indian trail used by the early Dutch settlers of Manhattan for riding from New Amsterdam, at the southern tip of the island, to New Haarlem, in the north. In 1673, it became the first road in America over which an overland mail carrier passed. In the eighteenth century the Bowery was a country lane lined with comfortable homes, abundant orchards, and the occasional tavern. In the early nineteenth century -- when numerous butchers were based in the neighborhood and slaughterhouses were located on nearby Christie, Forsyth and Elizabeth Streets -- livestock was frequently herded along the Bowery and hogs ran free, frightening passersby’s. Despite such hazards, the Bowery prospered. In the three decades before the Civil War, the street exploded with new theaters, saloons, and circuses, acquiring a glittering reputation. While members of high society sometimes deigned to attend the Bowery Theater, the local playhouses were better known for their rowdy crowds. German and Irish immigrants predominated. The Bowery The BoweryThe upper reaches of the Bowery, near Union Square, were at this time an aristocratic quarter. As the years passed its wealthy inhabitants grew increasingly uncomfortable with the street's roughneck reputation. Finally, in 1849, they arranged it so that the name Bowery was stricken from the stretch between Fourteenth Street and Cooper Square, reducing the street to its present length. But it was the deep shadow cast by the El, the subject of this 1936 photo, that most affected the Bowery's reputation. Hidden by the darkness, prostitutes, criminals and assorted conmen plied their trades. The Bowery's decline began in the 1880s but accelerated with the turn of the century. One by one the theaters closed, replaced by cheap boardinghouses, missions, and brothels. From a place of low-budget entertainment, the street became, for several decades, the epitome of vice, depravity, and degradation. The Bowery was even more infamous as a place of squalor, alcoholism, and wretchedness. Even prostitutes gravitated to other neighborhoods. In 1907 the street had 115 clothing stores for men, none for women. In the same year the nightly populations of the "flop houses," missions, and hotels on the Bowery was estimated at 25,000. (From Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City) Nostalgia for the Dirty I also came across a New York Times article written in 2001, titled, Documenting The Bowery, Or at Least Its Remnants; In Exhibitions and Films, an Unromantic Look at Manhattan Flophouse Life. In it, Doreen Carvajal writes that “for a neighborhood long scorned as the capital of dissipation, the Bowery and its dwindling flophouses and $10-a-night cubicles are finally getting history's respect and a measure of reverence for the lives of men on the margin.”. She then goes on to explain that Bowery flophouse exhibitions, walking tours, and Bowery photography exhibits have been quite popular. “The Bowery's seamy underside has long provoked fascination -- wealthy 19th-century New Yorkers were drawn to guided ''slumming tours'' like thirsty customers to rummy bars. And plans are under way to revive Bowery sightseeing. Why the resurgent interest in a topic museum officials call difficult history -- the saga of America's most notorious skid row? Because the Bowery is no more,'' said Nathan Smith, a 15-year Bowery resident who answers the telephone at the flophouse he manages in a smoky voice: Sunshiiiinnne! ''You're talking to the Sunshine Hotel, which was one of 200 hotels, and now there's only six left. The Bowery doesn't technically exist anymore. Everybody is rebuilding.''

A Sense of Place Jackson (1994, 157-158) describes a sense of place as describing the atmosphere to a place, the quality of its environment and possibly its attraction by causing a certain indefinable sense of well-being that makes people wanting to return to that place. It is it is the people - individuals and society - that integrate the features of topography, natural conditions, symbolic meanings and the built form through their value systems, to form a sense of place. A paper from Bar Ilan University’s Department of Geography in Israel used this concept of “sense of place” to understand the degree of overlap between social and physical space. Results were based on ethnographic analysis of in-depth interviews of residents, half of them living in the new buildings and half of them in adjacent old buildings. The study identifies the sense of place in and around new housing developments, built in two neglected neighborhoods in the city of Ramat Gan. The changes that have occurred were mainly in the neighborhood population, in infrastructure and services and in the appearance. This environmental change clearly forced people to redefine and resituate their social boundaries. It was a comparison between “then and now” and between “us and them”. The Sapir housing development was built on the main street of what was once regarded as a distressed neighborhood. In the 1990’s a process began, whereby buildings unfit for living were demolished and the Sapir new housing development was built in their place. A new resident describes the differences between “new” and “long time residents: “ Our population is a usual one, 20% intellectuals judging from their appearance. When you cross the street, what do you see…delinquents, very simple people”. Long time residents mentioned the differences between themselves and the new residents as follows: “ Those Ashkenazim1 shouldn’t be looking down on us and shouldn’t forget we have been living here for a long time…they are snobs, nothing is good enough for them, so let them go away”, and another long time resident said: “I have never lived in any other neighborhood, I was born here… the residents have changed, they don’t belong here, they are from outside. I’ve got nothing to do with anyone of them.” Those interviewed expressed feelings of enjoying the new well looked-after buildings, while expressing feelings of aversion to the old neglected buildings, and these people avoided the use of local educational and public facilities from their desire to avoid meeting or having any relations with the other population group. This situation very much reminded me of the new developments within the “once regarded as distressed” Bowery neighborhood. The Petitions I found clearly represent those who have been living in the Bowery for a long time and are distraught by their dissipating history, but by their new “pretentious” neighbors as well. The difference that I found between both situations is the existence of one small coffee shop which seems to integrate the different groups of people. Could a coffee shop mediate the tension in the air between different population groups? Think Coffee, Indeed.

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