On The Bowery For Independence Day. The Bowery is a street of about one mile in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Much of the Bowery was designated a National Historic District in 2013, and a map of the area is included early in the book. Over its long history, the Bowery has shown the diversity and potential of American life as it has been home to some of the wealthiest of Americans but more often to the poorest and the lost. It has been home to many immigrants, including Irish, Jews, Germans, Chinese, Italians and to African Americans. It is a community that continues to undergo change and is a street valuable to visit and to get to know this Independence Day.
The author, David Mulkins, is a retired history and cinema studies teacher and the president of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, a community organization dedicated to preserving the historic character of the Bowery. Architectural historian Kerri Calhane, Phd, author of the National Historic Preservation nomination for the Bowery, wrote a brief Foreword. Calhane aptly describes the book as a "prodigious feat of research." He points out that it "demonstrates a dedication to this place, and to the lives, histories, legends, and folklore that lend the Bowery its grit, its power, and its peculiar charm."
The book is replete with fascinating images of the people and places of the Bowery over time. Mulkins provides commentary on the images together with additional historical discussion. He gives a brief over view of the changing history of the Bowery from the time of the Lenape Indians, through the Dutch, through the early estates of the landed gentry early in the 19th Century to the present. The Bowery was once a home to the working class and a lively entertainment center. As Mulkins writes: "the profusion of saloons, tattoo parlors, gambling dens, whorehouses, and low-rent lodging houses, combined with the presence of gangs, roughnecks, the destitute, and criminal element, also brought notoriety." The Bowery became America's skid row early in the 20th Century through about the 1970s. The area has since undergone gentrification and renewal but has lost some of its character. Mulkins says: "This one-time stomping ground of the poor, the working class, and immigrants possesses an international multi-cultural character that is uniquely American, but could only have happened here on the Bowery."
Of the book's five chapters, the most familiar and the post poignant is chapter 3, titled "The Street of Foegotten Men". In images and text, this chapter shows the Bowery as America's most famous skid row, frequented by the destitute, with its flophouses and bars under the shadow of the Elevated Railroad. The chapter also describes the Rescue Missions and other community activities designed to provide help. I saw the Bowery briefly in the mid-1960s and have seen several documentary films on the skid row years . The images, Mulkins's text, and the sources he discusses bring insight to this central time in the Bowery's history. It is part of the American story and deserves commemoration on Independence Day.
The remaining four chapters range more widely over the Bowery's history. Malkins shows the range of the people that have lived or worked in the Bowery and of the historical architecture, some of which is no more. He discusses the Bowery as a center of the working class, with its entertainments in theater and music to a wide range of people together with, as he discussed in the Introduction, its more unsavory elements. Grit abounds throughout the Bowery's story, and relilience does as well. The book's final two chapters deal with the Bowery's history following the demise of skid row. It has became a haven for writers and artists, including the beats, experiemental jazz, punk rock, and much more. Billie Holiday performed in a Bowery club during her final years. The Bowery has also continued with social and cultural activism and with thought. Mulkins discusses historic Cooper Union , the Bowery's intellectual anchor, and the first free university in the United States open to all. He discusses many artists and intellectuals who for years made their home in the Bowery, including, for example, feminist writer Kate Millet (1934-2017) who lived in the Bowery for some sixty years and was active in community affairs.
This book reminded me of American urban life and of American life. We need to take and understand and love all of it even while working for change. I enjoyed seeing the Bowery over time and reviewing this book on Independence Day, July 4, 2025,.
