Room 01 of 111 · LOWER MANHATTAN · 1973

The Bowery

Cast iron storefronts, brick tenements, fire escapes and a street that never quite sleeps.

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The Bowery

The Bowery, the history

The Bowery is the oldest thoroughfare in Manhattan. It began as a Lenape trail and took its name from the Dutch bouwerij, the farm road that led to Peter Stuyvesant's estate. In the 19th century it held theaters and beer halls, and later became the city's skid row. The club CBGB opened at 315 Bowery in 1973 and launched punk rock in New York.

Source · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗

What the room is built from

Cast iron bases with brick uppers, fire escapes, roof tanks, an elevated girder crossing. Mood: after hours. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.

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1465 MIN
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1911
The fire of March 25, 1911 killed 146 garment workers in the Asch Building and drove the laws that remade the American workplace.
LIGHTS OUT4 MIN
The Blackout of July 13, 1977
What happened when New York lost power on July 13, 1977, the looting and fires that followed, and how the 1965 and 2003 blackouts differed.
OPEN LATE4 MIN
The Bodega and the Corner Store
Where the word bodega came from, the Puerto Rican, Dominican and Yemeni owners who built the corner store, the cat, and why nobody agrees how many there are.
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