The Bowery is a very well-known street in Manhattan that more or less marks the boundary between Chinatown and Little Italy on one side and the Lower East Side on the other — running from Chatham Square in the south to Astor Place in the north. It is the former location of the road Peter Stuyvesant's farm and takes its name from the Dutch word for farm, bouwerij.

Home of many music halls in the 19th Century, the Bowery later became notable for its economic depression. In the 1920s and 1930s, it was regarded as an impoverished area. The "Dead End Kids" of film were from the Bowery. In the 1940s through the 1970s, the Bowery was New York's "Skid Row," notable for "Bowery Bums" (alcoholics and homeless persons). In the 1960s and 1970s, the Bowery was viewed as a high crime, low rent area. The transformation of CBGB's from folk music to punk rock in 1974 was, at the time, a fitting reflection of the neighborhood. However, since the 1990s the entire Lower East Side has been reviving.

As of August 2004, gentrification is contributing to ongoing change along the Bowery. In particular, the number of high-rise condominiums is growing.

Major streets that intersect the Bowery include Canal Street, Delancey Street (at which corner the subway station named Bowery is situated), Houston Street and Bleecker Street .

External links

• New York Songlines: 4th Avenue
• Dave Ranney, or Thirty Years on the Bowery - autobiography of a Bowery dweller, published in 1910, from Project Gutenberg
• The Bowery at forgotten-ny.com - images, descriptions, and history