New York/Bowery

East 1st Street/Bowery/Houston Street

I'm working on a series of pictures of the Bowery taken over the past few years as an adjunct to my Lower East Side project. The picture above was taken during the demolition of the AvalonBay development site bounded by the East 1st Street, The Bowery, and Houston Street.

The single building standing is 295 Bowery, infamous as the location of McGurk's Suicide Hall, where a number of prostitutes were said to have ended their lives by swallowing acid. That was in the late 1890s long before the street had reached its most desolate nadir as skid row. The history of the building is nicely told by Rob Hill on his website.

In its last days, artists, most notably feminist author and artist Kate Millet lived there. She and others were relocated to make way for approximately 600 apartments built on both sides of Houston Street--very expensive rentals--with 20 percent of the units reserved for low income residents. Newcomers to the neighborhood are mostly unaware that the redevelopment of this site was part of a deal made with the community to rehabilitate and preserve another 600 units of low cost tenement housing on several adjacent blocks.