The Bowery

The name comes from the Dutch for farm.  It is the oldest thoroughfare on Manhattan Island, initially a footpath for the native Lenape.  As the city grew the Bowery was an early suburb for the affluent.  Visit the Merchant House Museum on 4th Street just west of the Bowery.
But by the time of the Civil war it was known for entertainment halls, German beer Gardens, brothels and flop houses.  Among the first gangs of New York were the Bowery Boys and it got so notorious that the area was one of the first to attract social reformers.  The Bowery Mission opened in 1873  is still in operation.  
In the "Gay  Nineties" the Bowery became the place for numerous Gay and Lesbian Bars.  Between the 1940's and the 1970's it was New York's "Skid Row" and the home to a new class of men labeled "The Bowery Bum".
Berenice Abbott took photos of that time.  She worked for the Federal Art Project between 1935 and1938. The photos are available on line through the New York Public Library, thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts.  There is also a great movie about the guys living on the Bowery called "On the Bowery".  Made in 1957 it stars the men and women who lived there. 

That is the Bowery I knew.  I worked at the Men's Shelter from 1973 until 1976 as a caseworker and  group worker.  The organization was called the Manhattan Bowery Project.  At that time people who were publicly intoxicated were sent to jail to "sleep it off".  MBP was set up to be a more humane form of intervention.  At MBP we had a van that went out on the street each day and if a man needed a doctor or wanted to get sober they were brought back to our facility. The men knew the van and our program by the time I was working there, and the guys in really bad shape would be brought by their buddies to the van.  Most of the men lived in flop houses but some lived on the street.
It was my job along with  other caseworkers, nurses, a doctor and a psychiatrist to intervene during their four day stay, and encourage some form of long term treatment.  We had some resources that we could offer.  They, of course, weren't Betty Ford clinics, but some guys took the opportunity and got off the Bowery.  Years later you might see them again but most of the time you never knew if it took.
Two men I remember particularly because of their medical condition and their frequent admissions.  One had a hernia the size of a football and the other had part of his skull removed.  Neither one could stay sober long enough to get the treatment they needed.  The street was a killer.
I learned while working there that wet brain is called Wernicker-Korsakoff syndrome.  It causes memory loss and ataxia, a wide gait also known as "drunken sailor's gait".  I learned not to take the elevator because lice can get on your clothes; watch your back climbing the four flights of stairs because you could get two black eyes as one of the nurses did; or get jumped from behind and mugged as I was. 

                                     I also worked at the Kenton Hotel, a men's shelter on the Bowery.  It is also known as the Kenton flop house.  The big building next to it is The Bowery Hotel , very much the new Bowery.  A flop house was an open space like a loft that had plywood partitions to make a 10 foot by 6 foot "living space".  Then they put chicken wire over the top as a roof and for access to fresh air; what there was of it.  I think we had 160 cots on 3 floors.  The men had to check out every day so the place could be cleaned and then we had to check them in every night.  I'd report the number of empty beds to the main office and they would fill them up with guys who needed a bed and shower.  The bathrooms and showers were communal and that was where the fights took place.  Sometimes lovers quarrels.  Sometimes they'd be "letting off steam", "collecting payment", etc..  While I was at the Kenton the city courts found New York City in violation of the law  because of over crowding at Riker's Island prison.  They released many from Rikers Island and sent them to the flop houses.  It says something about flop houses that some didn't show up and the ones that did were known to us.
I also learned that I could find an affordable apartment in the East Village and I did.  It was on Mott Street between Bleecker and Houston, $200 a month about a week's pay.  Then it was called Little Italy; now it's called Nolita.  My first apartment in Manhattan a five flight walk up, 2 rooms, bars on the windows and only broken into twice.  An affordable apartment in NYC had other costs.
The Bowery today has multi-million dollar condos, a new art museum, and "fine dining" by world renowned chefs like Daniel Boulud.  The NY Times and the East Villager note that when Avalon Bay Communities opened their first luxury apartment complex in 2006 with a Whole Foods Market on the Bowery gentrification had arrived.  I thought it happened earlier, but it was definitely after the 1970's when I moved here.