Bowery Alliance of Neighbors

Preserving the Bowery

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Jun 29 2016

NY Designated Landmarks & Historic District (Protected)

Landmarked Buildings bank clock on the Bowery

18 Bowery: Landmarked in 1966!

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
Built: circa 1785

Built: circa 1785
Architect: Unknown Style: Georgian

Mooney House was built for Edward Mooney, prominent in the local butchering trade of the period. This NR-listed NYC Landmark is considered the oldest extant brick townhouse in New York. Three-and­ a-half-story rowhouse, restored to reflect its original period of construction. Flemish bond brickwork. Nos. 14 and 76 Bowery are similar but altered versions of this type and period.
— National Register of Historic Places

Bowery's citizens on the Bowery

Legendary Bowery Boy Chuck Connors the self-described “Mayor of Chinatown”, lived here and made headquarters at Barney Flynn’s roughneck saloon downstairs. His staged-to-shock tours of Bowery and Chinatown started here.

According to songwriter Irving Berlin, it was Connors who walked him up Pell Street and helped get him a singing waiter job at the Pelham Café. Berlin wrote his first song there.

[Connors is seen on the right]

54-58 Bowery — CITIZENS SAVINGS BANK: Landmarked in 2011!

Landmarked Savings Bank
 on the Bowery

Built: 1922-24
Architect: Clarence W. Brazer
Style: Beaux Arts

The Citizens Savings Bank is a fine example of the Beaux-Arts style bank building of the late 19th and early 20th century. Brazer’s restrained interpretation of classical precedents conveyed a sense of financial strength and stability while not overwhelming the bank’s depositors. Four monumental arched windows (one now infilled) provided natural light to the banking room.

The street facades have Renaissanceinspired rusticated bases above which the windows are enframed by paired pilasters supporting an entablature in the Roman Doric order. Above the banking room an octagonal clerestory surmounted by the bank’s signature dome (reroofed in aluminum) denotes the transition from public to private space.

Landmarked Savings Bank interior on the Bowery

To further identify the building and its purpose, the cornice of the Bowery facade is adorned with stone sculptures by Charles Keck that were drawn from elements found in the Citizens Savings Bank seal. The central grouping, a wreathed clock with an eagle and seated figures of a Native American and a sailor, and beehives, the traditional symbols of thrift, were intended to be easily visible to commuters on the Third Avenue El (now demolished) and travelers on the Manhattan Bridge. Due to its prominent location, height, massing, and design, the Citizens Savings Bank, now a branch of HSBC, remains a visual anchor for commuters and the surrounding community. –Landmarks Preservation Commission, Aug. 9, 2011

indian-clock on the Bowery

97 BOWERY: Landmarked in 2010!

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery

Built: 1869
Architect: Peter L.P. Tostevin Style: Italianate

The 97 Bowery Building is a five-story, 25-footwide, early Italianate style, significantly intact, cast-ironfronted store-and-loft building. Built in 1869 for John P. Jube and designed by architect Peter L.P. Tostevin, the building was occupied until 1935 by John P. Jube & Co., a hardware and carriage supply business. 97 Bowery was built in a time when the Bowery was the major thoroughfare through the Lower East Side and a major commercial street with specialty shops, drygoods stores and fancy hardware businesses. The 97 Bowery Building is typical of commercial cast-iron construction during the 1850s and 1860s; and it is likely that various elements of the design were selected from a catalogue of standardized cast-iron components. Notable design elements include the Corinthian columns supporting arches as well as a classical cornice with a segmental arched pediment and acanthus modillions and studs, and spandrels similar in design to the spandrels of the former McCreery’s Dry Goods Emporium at 801 Broadway (cast by J.B. & W.W. Cornell Ironworks). The design features of 97 Bowery are similar to several other significant cast-iron buildings, such as the “Thomas Twins” at 317 Broadway (demolished) and 319 Broadway (1869, David & John Jardine), and the Haughwout building (1856, John P. Gaynor). Today, 97 Bowery remains an important reminder of the Bowery’s commercial emergence after the Civil War, and is a rare example of cast-iron architecture in this particular area of the city.
— Landmarks Preservation Commission, 2010

124-126 BOWERY — BOWERY BANK: Landmarked in 2012!

Landmarked 124-126 Bowery bank on the Bowery
Photo by Edmund V. Grillon Courtesy MCNY

Bowery Bank, 124-126 Bowery, 1975

BUILT: 1901
ARCHITECT: YORK & SAWYWER
STYLE: BEAUX ARTS

This Beaux Arts former bank in the French Renaissance mode was designed in 1901 by the prominent architectural firm of York and Sawyer as a neighbor to the grand Beaux Arts Bowery Savings Bank, which flanks this corner on both the Bowery and Grand Street facades. The former Bowery Bank building (not to be confused with the Bowery Savings Bank) features highly ornamented Renaissance facades with large tripartite window openings capped by pediments with acroterion returns and embellished with carved shells, triglyphs, and guttae. The windows have cast iron fluted columns and pierced iron railings suggesting balconies. A copper cornice has acanthus leaf motifs and heavy scroll brackets.

Landmarked 124-126 Bowery bank on the Bowery

A copper cornice has acanthus leaf motifs and heavy scroll brackets.

130 Bowery:Landmarked in 1966!

Landmarked 124-126 Bowery bank closeup on the Bowery

Built: 1894
Architect: Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White
Style: Classical Revival

Its Imperial Roman temple front became the standard for civic buildings in the United States.— Samuel G. and Elizabeth White, McKim, Mead, and White: The Masterworks

The Bowery Savings Bank was designed in 1894 by Stanford White of the famed architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. This monumental Classical Revival bank is one of the first buildings to herald the new classicism popularized by Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Unable to secure the adjacent corner lot on Grand St., it was designed L-shaped fashion, with ornate entrances on both streets.

The Indiana Limestone and granite bank features a neo-Roman temple frontage on Bowery with massive Corinthian columns and a triumphal arch with a deep, coffered barrel vault. The central pediment’s clock is flanked by reclining classical figures and lions. The Grand Street façade has a sculpted pediment raised on Corinthian columns. Pediment sculptures are by Frederick MacMonnies., the Beaux Art sculptor used by White for many of his buildings.
The exterior and interior designated NYC landmark is now Capitale, an event venue.
— Mitchell Grubler, Chair, Landmarks Committee, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Written for Windows on the Bowery, a 2016 historic signage project

190 Bowery – Germania Bank Building: Landmarked in 2005!

Landmarked 190 Bowery Germania Bank Building on the Bowery

Germania Bank Building

The granite and brick building features rusticated stonework, a chamfered corner with an arched entry flanked by Tuscan columns, and multi-story pilasters.

Built: 1898-1899
Architect: Robert Maynicke Style: Beaux Arts

The former Germania Bank building is an impressive Beaux Arts-style structure prominently located on the northwest corner of the Bowery and Spring Street. Built in 1898-99 to the designs of architect Robert Maynicke, it was the third home of the Germania Bank, which was established in 1869 by a group of local businessmen of German extraction. By 1840, more than 24,000 German immigrants and their descendents were living in New York City. Their numbers increased dramatically over the next two decades, resulting in the development of the area along and to the east of the Bowery above Division Street as a German neighborhood called Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany. The neighborhood became the major German-American center in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. German immigrants contributed greatly to New York City by establishing churches, synagogues, and other cultural organizations, as well as creating their own banking, savings, and loan institutions, such as the Germania Bank. They also opened architectural firms and construction companies. Architect Robert Maynicke, who was of German birth, attended Cooper Union, about ten blocks to the north of this building, and worked for the noted architect George B. Post before co-founding the firm Maynicke & Franke in 1895. The Germania Bank building is considered to be one of his most important designs. Marc Eidlitz, whose construction company built the bank, was also of German descent. The granite and brick building features rusticated stonework, a chamfered corner with an arched entry flanked by Tuscan columns, and multi-story pilasters. The ground floor features large arched openings with voussoirs surmounted a massive denticulated cornice. A similar cornice terminates the fifth story. The top story features paired arched openings also surrounded with voussoirs and concludes in an elaborate copper cheneau. The building’s facades are remarkably intact.

222-224 Bowery: Landmarked in 1998!

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery

Young Men’s Institute Building (Young Men’s Christian Association)

Built: 1884-1885
Architect: Bradford L. Gilbert
Style: Queen Anne

This 1884-1885 building, the first branch erected by the New York City YMCA Board of Directors, is the sole survivor of New York’s nineteenth-century YMCA branches and the major surviving NYC work of architect Bradford L. Gilbert. This building originally housed the Young Men’s Institute, a membership
organization intended to promote the physical, intellectual, and spiritual health of young working men in the densely crowded Bowery. The five-story Queen Anne style building has a largely intact façade, which is asymmetrically organized with a recessed entry at the south bay; a rusticated sandstone base with segmental arches; a mid-section featuring giant pilasters framing a double-story arcade with recessed metal-enframed windows; and a top section crowned by a slate-covered mansard roof pierced by two dormers. The larger dormer has a pediment with terra-cotta decoration surrounding the commencement date, 1884. In 1915, the firm of Parish & Schroeder renovated the three lower stories at the rear for an enlarged gymnasium, new shower and locker room, and a swimming pool.

The YMCA left the building in 1932, and it has since become studio/residential space for artists, many of whom are world renowned, and it houses a teaching and meditation center for a community of Tibetan Buddhists.
— Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1998

famous people at the YMCA

Artists in residence: Mark Rothko, William Burroughs, John Giorno

227 BOWERY — BOWERY MISSION: Landmarked in 2012!

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery

BUILT 1876;
ALTERATIONS 1908-09; RENOVATIONS 2001
ARCHITECT: UNKNOWN; MARSHAL L. & HENRY C. EMERY; DIFFENDALE & KUBEC
STYLE: NEO-GREC/TUDOR REVIVAL & COLONIAL REVIVAL ALTERATIONS

This 1876, five-story, red-brick, Neo-Grec, former coffin factory, designed by architect William Jose, has housed the Bowery Mission since 1909. Previously located at 105 Bowery, a disastrous fire in 1898 motivated the Mission to create a building that was as fireproof as possible. Alterations of 1908-1909 by Marshall L. & Henry G. Emery ensured that all the wood of the chapel was covered up to the ceiling and all the door and window casements were covered with metal. The floors were steel and concrete with tile coverings. Dedicated on November 7, 1909, the new chapel features light colored walls embellished with verses and a high vaulted ceiling. Dominating the Tudor-Revival façade, designed by Henry G. Emery in 1908-09 to suggest a welcoming English inn, is a wide bay projecting above the arched entrance and containing four stained-glass windows illustrating the parable of the Return of the Prodigal Son. The design of these windows, that light the chapel, is attributed to Benjamin Sellers, who trained at the Tiffany Studios. A 2001 renovation by architects Diffendale & Kubec included restoration of the interior of the Gothic Revival chapel. The intricate 26-foot-high truss ceiling was repainted, men living at the mission refinished the pews and the stained-glass windows were restored by Shenandoah, Inc.

The Bowery Mission, opened by Reverend and Mrs. A.G. Ruliffson at 36 Bowery in 1879, is the third rescue mission established in America. In 1909, the year the mission opened at 227 Bowery, President William Howard Taft made a nighttime visit to the mission, entering through a rear door in Freeman Alley where the breadline formed. He gave a rousing talk in the chapel to an enthusiastic crowd that spilled out to the street. Franny Crosby, the blind poet and hymn writer who is credited with composing more than 9,000 sacred songs during her lifetime—including “The Rescue Band,” celebrating the mission movement — wrote and sang hundreds of her hymns at the Bowery Mission.

330 Bowery: Landmarked in 1967!

Landmarked Lane Theatre Buildings on the Bowery

Bouwerie Lane Theatre Building (aka Bond Street Savings Bank)

Built: 1874
Architect: Henry Engelbert
Style: Italianate

The Bond Street Savings Bank, completed in 1874, became the German Exchange Bank by 1879, catering to the growing German population in this area, which became known as Kleindeutschland (Little Germany). Although the facades of this Italianate style building are all cast-iron, the intended impression is of a great stone structure with Ionic columns, ornamental pediments, corners braced by quoining and cornices on every floor.

In 1963, Honey Waldman and Bruce Becker converted the bank into the Bouwerie Lane Theatre, opening with Frank Langella in Andre Gide’s The Immoralist.  Later productions included The Palm Casino Review, with members of the Cockettes, and Dames at Sea, which made Bernadette Peters a star.   

From 1974 to 2006, this was home to the Obie Award-winning Jean Cocteau Repertory Company, whose over 200 productions included premieres of the Bentley/Milhaud version of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Something Cloudy, Something Clear, Tennessee Williams’ last play to premiere in NYC during his lifetime.

A NYC Landmark, in 2007 it was converted to retail spaces and condominiums.
— Mitchell Grubler, Landmarks Committee Chair, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors Written for Windows on the Bowery, a 2016 historic signage project.

Landmarked Lane Theatre Buildings on the Bowery

The Bouwerie Lane Theatre productions included The Palm Casino Review, with members of the Cockettes.

357 Bowery – Germania Fire Insurance Building: Landmarked in 2010!

Landmarked 357 Bowery Germania Fire Insurance Building on the Bowery

Built: 1870
Architect: Carl Pfeiffer
Style: Second Empire

Designed by a prominent German-American architect and built in 1870, the Germania Fire Insurance Company Bowery Building recalls the time when the Bowery was a major thoroughfare of America’s leading German-American neighborhood. Known as Kleindeutschland, this neighborhood was home to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers of German descent, and was “in fullest bloom” when this building opened. The Germania Fire Insurance Company was founded in 1859, counting many prominent German-born New Yorkers among its executives and directors; the firm was prospering when it constructed this building to house its Kleindeutschland office, although it moved this office farther up the Bowery after little more than a decade. The building housed tenants from the time of its opening, and by 1880, its residents included Irish, German, andChinese immigrants. Between 1900 and 1920, industrial tenants displaced its residents, and in 1929, the building was purchased by members of two families who manufactured barber-shop and beauty-parlor equipment in the building into the early 1970s. Residents started returning by the mid-1970s, and today, the building is entirely residential.

The architect of the Germania Bowery Building, Carl Pfeiffer, studied architecture andengineering in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1863. He completed many prominent commissions for hospitals, churches, and private residences, and designed one of the city’s earliest cooperative apartment buildings, which was constructed by a company he organized. Pfeiffer’s design for the Germania building was inspired by the grand office buildings then being constructed by the nation’s insurance companies, featuring a high basement and imitation mansard roof with dormer, as well as a cast-iron storefront. Well-preserved after 140 years, the Germania Fire Insurance Company Bowery Building remains a significant survivor from the 19th-century Bowery and the days when Kleindeutschland “was at its peak, glorying in its status as the capital of German America.”
— Landmarks Preservation Commission, March 23, 2010

Cooper Union Foundation Building: Landmarked in 1966!

Built: 1853-7
Architect: Frederick A. Peterson Style: Anglo-Italianate

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
Cooper Union Foundation Building, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
Cooper Square
Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
The Great Hall, Cooper Union

59-61 Cooper Square – Metropolitan Savings Bank: Landmarked in 1969!

Built: 1867
Architect: Carl Pfeiffer Style: French Second Empire

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
First Ukrainian Assembly of God

THE NOHO HISTORIC DISTRICT

Most of west Bowery above Houston is protected by the North of Houston Historic District, including west side of Cooper Square.

Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery
Landmarked Buildings on the Bowery

Written by onno · Categorized: Preservation

Feb 21 2016

Letters Supporting Bowery Preservation

Elected Representatives/Political Candidates

  • City Councilmember Margaret Chin, Dist 1
  • City Councilmember Rosie Mendez, District 2
  • Manhatten Borough President Scott Stringer
  • U.S. Congress Member Nydia Velazquez, Dist 12
  • NY State Sen. Daniel Squadron, Dist 25
  • NY State Sen. Thomas Duane, Dist. 29
  • NY Assemblymember Sheldon Silver, Dist 64
  • NY Assemblymember Deborah Glick, Dist 66
  • Former City Councilmember Alan Gerson, Dist 1
  • Pete Gleason, 2009 Candidate, CC Dist 1

Community Organizations

  • The New York Landmarks Conservancy
  • Society of American Magicians NYC
  • Victorian Society NY
  • Historic Districts Council
  • The Society for the Architecture of the City
  • Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
  • Cooper Square Committee
  • Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES)
  • CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
  • University Settlement
  • Civic Center Residents Coalition
  • Lower East Side Preservation Initiative
  • SoHo Alliance
  • Little Italy Neighbors Association
  • Two Bridges Neighborhood Council
  • Friends of NoHo
  • Chinese Community Center, Inc.
  • Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association
  • Hester Street Collaborative
  • NOHO NY Business Improvement District
  • Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance
  • Foundation
  • East Village Community Coalition (EVCC)
  • East 5th Street Block Association
  • East Village History Project
  • City Lore
  • 6th and 7th Street Block Association
  • Lower East Side Girls Club
  • Bowery Mission
  • Community Board #3 Manhatten

Community Gardens

  • 6th and Ave B Garden Inc.
  • Liz Christy/Bowery-Houston Community Garden
  • M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden

Artists / Architects / Historians / Writers

  • Mike Wallace
  • Martin Scorsese
  • Tom Klem, Society of American Magicians NYC
  • Hettie Jones, Poet/Memoirist
  • Luc Sante, Writer and Critic
  • Jay Maisel Photography, Jay Maisel
  • W R Studio Inc., Will Ryman
  • Steve Elson, Musician
  • Phillip Glass
  • Trav S.D.
  • Michael A. Geyer, Architect
  • David Freeland, Historian
  • Peter Quinn, Novelist/Editor/Essayist

Theaters/Performance Spaces

  • Amato Opera
  • The Bowery Ballroom
  • Bowery Poetry Club
  • Dixon Place
  • 45 Bleecker Theatre
  • Jean Cocteau Repertory/Phoenix Theatre Ensemble
  • La Mama Theatre
  • New York Theatre Workshop
  • Lisa Kristal: Daughter of CBGB Founder

Cultural Organizations

  • Fourth Arts Block
  • Asian American Arts Center

Institutions

  • New York Marble Cemetery, Inc.

Museums

  • Sperone Westwater Gallery
  • Merchant’s House Museum
  • Tenement Museum
  • Italian American Museum
  • Museum at Eldridge Street

Residents/Tenants Associations

  • Cooper Square HDFC
  • Thelma Burdick Tenant Association (10 Stanton @ Bowery)

Restaurants/Bars

  • Balthazar Restaurant/Minetta Tavern, Keith McNally, Owner
  • DBGB Kitchen & Bar, Daniel Boulud, Chef/Owner
  • Great Jones Cafe
  • Katra Lounge
  • McSorley’s Old Ale House
  • Prune Restaurant
  • Bowery Wine Company

Building Owners / Resident Building Owners

  • Tony Goldman (Goldman Properties)
  • Number Four Rivington Street
  • 222 Bowery Owners Corp.
  • Jay Maisel, 190 Bowery
  • Will Ryman, 193 Bowery
  • 184 Bowery Condominium Association

Businesses

  • Dagny and Barstow
  • Whole Foods Market Bowery
  • Downtown Music Gallery
  • John Varvatos
  • Green Depot
  • Chair Up Inc.
  • Billy’s Antiques & Props
  • Steve’s on the Bowery
  • Alleva Dairy
  • New York Jewelers Exchange
  • A. Plus Restaurant Supply, Inc.
  • Bowery Sign Production & Supply, Inc.
  • Champ Depot
  • O’Lampia Studio, Inc.
  • The Watch Corner
  • All Care Business Machines, Inc.
  • Regent Restaurant Equipment, Inc.
  • Bowery & Vine Wine and Spirits
  • Tan Tin-Hung Supermarket
  • Noble Lighting Inc.
  • Leekan Designs
  • Euroluce Lighting
  • Lighting Library
  • Norman’s Sound & Vision
  • Bowery Home Supplies
  • Natalie Creative Jewelry
  • Attorney Thomas E. Spath
  • Abelman, Frayne, & Schwab, Attorneys

Written by onno · Categorized: Preservation

Feb 21 2016

East Bowery Preservation Plan

Preservation plan

Written by onno · Categorized: Preservation

Feb 21 2016

Lost Architectural Treasures (Demolished)

Interior of the German Winter Garden at 45 Bowery, 1865.
Painting by Fritz Meyer, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Interior of the German Winter Garden at 45 Bowery, 1865.

1876 photo of the Dry Dock Bank that once stood at 339-343 Bowery, at the corner of Bowery and 3rd Street.
New-York Historical Society

1876 photo of the Dry Dock Bank that once stood at 339-343 Bowery, at the corner of Bowery and 3rd Street.

As Nathan Silver shows us in the classic study Lost New York, the destruction of beautiful and distinctive architecture in this city — structures that help tell us who we are and where we came from — did not begin with the destruction of magisterial Penn Station in 1963. The Bowery was the city’s first entertainment district, with theatres, nightspots and businesses that served the working class as well immigrant Irish, Italian, Chinese, Germans and Jews, yet few of the theatres of that time survive to tell the tale. One of those cited by Silver was this stunning structure that once stood on lower Bowery and catered to the Germans of the area’s Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) .

135 Bowery: DEMOLISHED in 2012

135 Bowery

BUILT: 1819; ALTERATIONS 1903, CIRCA 1920
ARCHITECT: UNKNOWN STYLE: FEDERAL

This Federal-style dwelling was constructed in 1819 for John A. Hardenbrook, who owned two lots, 133 and 135 Bowery by 1809. (In 1814 he moved his soap and candle manufacturing establishment from Broadway to a shop at 133 Bowery.) The three-story building with attic is of wood frame construction with a brick façade laid in Flemish bond and a surviving end chimney. Characteristic of the Federal style, the peaked roof has twin gabled dormers capped by a cornice with returns and wood spandrels suggesting arched windows.

The building was probably converted to mixed use in the last quarter of the 19th century. In 1903, architect Edwin C. George introduced projecting show windows at street level. Interior columns were made fireproof with terra-cotta blocks. At this time galvanized iron window frames with classical molded lintels replaced the original simple stone lintels on the second and third floors. The original stone sills remain.

In 1907, the building was owned by John Samowindyke and leased to Bernhard Gutter. By 1920, ownership had passed to Samowindyke’s widow, Anna who was leasing it to Benjamin Gleidman. At this time interior alterations were made to the first and second floors and new store windows were made flush with the building line. Reflecting its participation in almost 200 years of rich and varied Bowery history, it has housed a hat-maker, the Red, White and Blue gambling dive in the 1890s, a barbershop, a pawnbroker, and later, Abraham Edson’s jewelry store. Surviving in a remarkable state of preservation, No. 135 is a rare example of a Federal-style dwelling converted to mixed use in response to the changing residential/commercial climate of the Bowery.

In June 2011, with the support of City Council Member Margaret Chin, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to designate 135 Bowery a NYC Landmark.

In September 2011, at the urging of the foreign owned First American International Bank — which wanted to demolish the building — Council Member Chin successfully urged the City Council to overturn 135 Bowery’s landmark status.

Among other arguments made, Council Member Chin told the City Council that the owners were going to provide much needed affordable office space in the new building they were going to build.

135 Bowery was demolished in 2012. The bank eventually sold the building, and no such affordable office space has thus far materialized.

138-142 Bowery: DEMOLISHED March 2016!

138 Bowery circa 1997
Top middle: Antonio Maiori,
Bottom: W. C. Fields

Gaiety Dime Museum / Teatro Italiano (aka Drammatico Nazionale)
BUILT: CIRCA 1889
STYLE: RENAISSANCE REVIVAL

In 1903, this was Drammatico Nazionale, one of several Italian theatres established on the Bowery by the great Antonio Maiori. Though Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo DaPonte had staged Italian opera In NYC as early as 1808, and opened a short-lived Italian opera house in 1833, it was through Maiori on the Bowery that Italian theatre was established here.
Maiori’s 1902 appearance as Cellini at the Bowery’s Windsor Theatre had made him the darling of NY society’s elite 400, who would travel there in slumming parties to see what Mrs. Havemeyer had proclaimed “the greatest tragedian in the world.”

In addition to the Drammatico Nazionale, Maiori established Maiori’s Variety Theatre at 235 Bowery and Maiori’s Royal Theatre at 165-167 Bowery. Actor/producer/director Maiori also co-founded the Italian Actors Union.
storian/Educator Written for Windows on the Bowery, a 2016 signage project.

This structure was also popular from 1890 to 1902 as the Gaiety, one of the Bowery’s most flamboyant dime museums. In addition to trained lions and boxing exhibitions, one could see Jo-Jo the Dog Face Boy, tramp juggler W.C. Fields and contortionist Zamora — “the Triple-jointed Wonder” — an escape artist who pre-dated Houdini.
— David Mulkins

140 BOWERY: DEMOLISHED March 2016!

138 Bowery circa 1997
138 BOWERY, circa 1997

BUILT: CIRCA 1799
ARCHITECT: UNKNOWN STYLE: FEDERAL

This early Federal-style building may date back to at least 1808 and may even have been constructed in the last decade of the 18th Century. It is one of the oldest buildings still standing on the Bowery. Characteristic of the Federal-style, the 2 ½ story building has a peaked roof with twin gabled dormers capped by a cornice with returns and wood spandrels suggesting arched windows. The second floor windows of the four bay-wide façade display paneled stone lintels. From 1799-1802, 140 Bowery is listed as an address for William Everet, butcher. In 1808, another butcher, Henry Lovell is listed as owner. At least as early as 1825 the building served as both business and residence. Michael Armstrong had a dry goods business at 140 and at 140 ½ Robert M. Hartley had a dry goods store. By, at least, 1828 the owner is listed as Robert Tier.

138 Bowery circa 1932
138 BOWERY, circa 1932
In late 2011, to prevent its possible designation as a NYC Landmark, the owner removed the dormers. Building was demolished along with 138 and 142 Bowery in March 2016.

185 Bowery – Germania Bank Building: Demolished in 2010!

185 Bowery – Germania Bank Building: Demolished in 2010!

First of its 3 locations on the Bowery
BUILT: 1870S STYLE: SECOND EMPIRE

I am far from alone in thinking that the building boom has gone far enough. If huge hotels continue to be built there, the congestion will erase the very attraction that leads visitors to the Bowery. The scale will be utterly destroyed, and many charming survivors of the nineteenth century — the exquisite house at 195, for example, — are immediately endangered.
— Historian Luc Sante (Low Life) from 5/1/2009 letter to City Planning

185 Bowery – Germania Bank Building: Demolished in 2010!
The 4 buildings at 185-191 Bowery were demolished and are being replaced by the luxury high-rise Citizen M Hotel.
185 Bowery – Germania Bank Building: Demolished in 2010! to make way for atrocity

35 Cooper Square: Demolished in May 2011!

BUILT: CIRCA 1827
STYLE: FEDERAL STYLE

Built by Nicholas William Stuyvesant, a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant — The oldest building on Cooper Square: Over 30 years older than nearby Cooper Union, 7 Years older than Merchant’s House Museum. Abe Lincoln would have walked past 35 Cooper on his way to make the great anti-slavery speech at Cooper Union. Residents included Beat poet Diane di Prima and actor Joel Grey.

Painting by Patricia Melvin circa 2005.

Luxury Hotel and Condo Towers Are Destroying the Bowery’s Historic Context and Character.
Luxury Hotel and Condo Towers Are Destroying the Bowery’s Historic Context and Character.

Written by onno · Categorized: Preservation

Feb 21 2016

Existing Architectural Treasures (Unprotected)

content

Written by onno · Categorized: Preservation

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