The Bowery - (Images of America) by David Mulkins (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Bowery is New York City's oldest street. Stretching 1.25 miles from Chatham Square to Cooper Square, it was a Native American footpath, Dutch wagon road, and the triumphal march route as Washington's troops expelled the British. The city's first entertainment district, it has seminal ties to tap dance, vaudeville, Yiddish theater, Houdini, modern tattooing, and American song. It was the working-class main street for sailors, shopgirls, sporting men, gangs, gays, and immigrant Irish, Italians, Chinese, Jews, and Germans. It saw America's first free Black homesteads, first streetcars, first baseball club, and first free university. It boasts New York City's oldest brick townhouse, oldest hotel, and first community garden. It witnessed labor marches, riots, and Lincoln's famous antislavery speech at Cooper Union. Though it became a notorious skid row, during the second half of the 20th century its artists' community and music venues helped foster Abstract Expressionism, Beat literature, improvisational jazz, and punk rock.

The images in this book come from dozens of libraries, archives, museums, photographers, and collections from all over. David Mulkins is a retired history and cinema studies teacher, president of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, and editor/contributing writer for the book Windows on the Bowery: 400 Years on NYC's Oldest Street.

Review Quotes

"Every picture in the book serves a function in a narrative that takes you all the way from the street's origin as a Lenape footpath to the present day, all the while making an airtight case for the Bowery as THE birthplace of American popular culture, which it is." -- Writer and performer Trav S.D. author of No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (2005) and Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube (2013).

"The Bowery is a delicious treat, an ice cream cone for fans of urban lore. This slender volume. . .honors "America's first entertainment district" by being tremendous fun to peruse. Packed with splendid photos and illustrations, it's a cornucopia of surprising history, breezily recounted via visuals, captions and brief text replete with telling, human-interest details."--Phyllis Eckhaus, The Village View

"Leads us through the heartbeat of New York City's oldest street--from pre-settler Indigenous paths to revolutions, artistic awakenings, and deep social reckonings. One of the few who truly understands the depth of the Bowery's legacy, Mulkins offers not just a visual record, but a journey through time. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand New York City beyond its mythsJason."-- Storbakken, Senior Chaplain, the Bowery Mission; author of Bowery Mission: Grit and Grace on Manhattan's Oldest Street (2019).

"David Mulkins' wonderful new book, The Bowery, is filled with extremely rare images that, along with the informative text, illuminate the history of this important thoroughfare. The book is essential reading for those interested in New York history, as well as anyone looking for a captivating account of the places and forces that have shaped American popular culture."--David Freeland, author of Automats, Taxi Dances, & Vaudeville (2009) and American Hotel: the Waldorf-Astoria and the Making of a Century (2021).

About the Author

The images in this book come from dozens of libraries, archives, museums, photographers, and collections from all over. David Mulkins is a retired history and cinema studies teacher, president of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, and editor/contributing writer for the book Windows on the Bowery: 400 Years on NYC's Oldest Street.