A rare original 1898 stereoview photoraph of The Bowery in New York City by Strohmeyr & Wyman. With a description in six different languages to the reverse. Excellent condition.
See the story of the Bowery below.
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The Bowery (unmarked), leading to the "Road to Kings Bridge, where the Rebels mean to make a Stand" in a British map of 1776
Colonial and Federal periods
The Bowery is the oldest thoroughfare on Manhattan Island, preceding European intervention as a Lenape footpath, which spanned roughly the entire length of the island, from north to south.[12] When the Dutch settled Manhattan island, they named the path Bouwerie road – "bouwerie" (or later "bouwerij") being an old Dutch word for "farm"[13] – because it connected farmlands and estates on the outskirts to the heart of the city in today's Wall Street/Battery Park area.
In 1654, the Bowery's colonial residents settled in the area of Chatham Square; ten freedmen and their wives set up cabins and a cattle farm there. Petrus Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam before the English took control, retired to his Bowery farm in 1667. After his death in 1672, he was buried in his private chapel. His mansion burned down in 1778 and his great-grandson sold the remaining chapel and graveyard, now the site of the Episcopal church of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.[14]
In her Journal of 1704–05, Sarah Kemble Knight describes the Bowery as a leisure destination for residents of New York City in December:
Their Diversions in the Winter is Riding Sleys about three or four Miles out of Town, where they have Houses of entertainment at a place called Bowery, and some go to friends Houses who handsomely treat them. [...] I believe we mett 50 or 60 slays that day – they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they'le turn out of the path for none except a Loaden Cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, they'r Tables being as free to their Naybours as to themselves.[15]
By 1766, when John Montresor made his detailed plan of New York,[16] "Bowry Lane", which took a more north-tending track at the rope walk, was lined for the first few streets with buildings that formed a solid frontage, with market gardens behind them; when Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist for Mozart's Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Così fan tutte, immigrated to New York City in 1806, he briefly ran one of the shops along the Bowery, a fruit and vegetable store. In 1766, straight lanes led away at right angles to gentlemen's seats, mostly well back from the dusty "Road to Albany and Boston", as it was labeled on Montresor's map; Nicholas Bayard's was planted as an avenue of trees. James Delancey's grand house, flanked by matching outbuildings, stood behind a forecourt facing Bowery Lane; behind it was his parterre garden, ending in an exedra, clearly delineated on the map.
The Bull's Head Tavern was noted for George Washington's having stopped there for refreshment before riding down to the waterfront to witness the departure of British troops in 1783. Leading to the Post Road, the main route to Boston, the Bowery rivaled Broadway as a thoroughfare; as late as 1869, when it had gained the "reputation of cheap trade, without being disreputable" it was still "the second principal street of the city".[17]
Early growth
As the population of New York City continued to grow, its northern boundary continued to shift northward, and by the early 1800s the Bowery was no longer a farming area outside the city. The street gained in respectability and elegance, becoming a broad boulevard, as well-heeled and famous people moved their residences there, including Peter Cooper, the industrialist and philanthropist.[3] The Bowery began to rival Fifth Avenue as an address.[3]
When Lafayette Street was opened parallel to the Bowery in the 1820s, the Bowery Theatre was founded by prominent families on the site of the Red Bull Tavern, which had been purchased by Andrew Morris and John Jacob Astor; it opened in 1826 and was the largest auditorium in North America at the time.[3] Across the way the Bowery Amphitheatre was erected in 1833, specializing in the more populist entertainments of equestrian shows and circuses. From stylish beginnings, the tone of Bowery Theatre's offerings matched the slide in the social scale of the Bowery itself.
Economic decline
Berenice Abbott photograph of a Bowery restaurant in 1935, when the street was lined with flophousesThe Bowery Lodge is one of the last remaining flophouses on the Bowery
By the time of the Civil War, the mansions and shops had given way to popular music halls, brothels, beer gardens, pawn shops, and flophouses, like the one at No. 15 where the composer Stephen Foster lived in 1864.[18]Theodore Dreiser closed his tragedy Sister Carrie, set in the 1890s, with the suicide of one of the main characters in a Bowery flophouse. The Bowery, which marked the eastern border of the slum of "Five Points", had also become the turf of one of America's earliest street gangs, the nativistBowery Boys. In the spirit of social reform, the first YMCA opened on the Bowery in 1873;[19] another notable religious and social welfare institution established during this period was the Bowery Mission, founded in 1880 at 36 Bowery by Reverend Albert Gleason Ruliffson. The mission has remained along the Bowery throughout its lifetime. In 1909 the mission moved to its current location at 227–229 Bowery.
By the 1890s, the Bowery was a center for prostitution that rivaled the Tenderloin, also in Manhattan, and for bars catering to gay men and some lesbians at various social levels, from The Slide at 157 Bleecker Street, New York's "worst dive",[20] to Columbia Hall at 5th Street, called Paresis Hall. One investigator in 1899 found six saloons and dance halls, the resorts of "degenerates" and "fairies", on the Bowery alone.[21] Gay subculture was more highly visible there and more integrated into working-class male culture than it was to become in the following generations, according to historian George Chauncey.
From 1878 to 1955 the Third Avenue El ran above the Bowery, further darkening its streets, populated largely by men. "It is filled with employment agencies, cheap clothing and knickknack stores, cheap moving-picture shows, cheap lodging-houses, cheap eating-houses, cheap saloons", writers in The Century Magazine found it in 1919. "Here, too, by the thousands come sailors on shore leave, – notice the 'studios' of the tattoo artists, – and here most in evidence are the 'down and outs'".[22]Prohibition eliminated the Bowery's numerous saloons: One Mile House, the "stately old tavern... replaced by a cheap saloon"[23] at the southeast corner of Rivington Street, named for the battered milestone across the way,[24] where the politicians of the East Side had made informal arrangements for the city's governance,[25][26] was renovated for retail space in 1921, "obliterating all vestiges of its former appearance", The New York Times reported. Restaurant supply stores were among the businesses that had come to the Bowery,[27] and many remain to this day.
Pressure for a new name after World War I came to naught[27] and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was an impoverished area. From the 1940s through the 1970s, the Bowery was New York City's "Skid Row," notable for "Bowery Bums" (disaffected alcoholics and homeless persons).[28] Among those who wrote about Bowery personalities was New Yorker staff member Joseph Mitchell (1908–1996). Aside from cheap clothing stores that catered to the derelict and down-and-out population of men, commercial activity along the Bowery became specialized in used restaurant supplies and lighting fixtures.[3] In the 1930s and again in 1947, there were efforts to change the name of the Bowery to something more "dignified and prosaic", such as "Fourth Avenue South".[29]
Revival and gentrification
Avalon Bowery Place, one of several new luxury developments on the Bowery
85, 83, 81 Bowery (from left to right) in 2010
The vagrant population of the Bowery declined after the 1970s, in part because of the city's effort to disperse it.[3] Since the 1990s the entire Lower East Side has been reviving, and gentrification has contributed to ongoing change along the Bowery. In particular, the number of high-risecondominiums is growing.[30] In 2007, the SANAA-designed facility for the New Museum of Contemporary Art opened between Stanton and Prince Street.[31] In 2008, AvalonBay Communities opened Avalon Bowery Place, its first luxury apartment complex on the Bowery; the structure includes a Whole Foods Market. Avalon Bowery Place was quickly followed with the development of Avalon Bowery Place II.[30]
The new development has not come without social costs. Michael Dominic's 2001 documentary Sunshine Hotel followed the lives of residents of one of the few remaining flophouses. Construction on the Wyndham Garden Hotel at 93 Bowery in the late Aughts destabilized neighboring building 128 Hester Street (owned by the same man, William Su), and 60 tenants were thrown out of the building with the help of the Department of Buildings.[32] At least 75 tenants were displaced from 83 to 85 Bowery in January 2018 in frigid temperatures due to long-overdue repairs that needed to be made. Tenants accused the landlord of using this displacement to start renovating the buildings into a hotel,[33] and they went on a hunger strike.[34]
The Bowery from Houston to Delancey Street still serves as New York's principal market for restaurant equipment and from Delancey to Grand for lamps.
Areas
Upper and Lower Bowery
The upper Bowery refers to the portion of the Bowery north of Houston Street; the lower Bowery refers to the portion south of it.[35]
One of the most architecturally diverse and historically significant streetscapes in the city; first residence for many immigrant groups. Currently Sohotel[36]: 106
In October 2011, a Bowery Historic District was registered with the New York State Register of Historic Places and therefore was automatically nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. A grassroots community organization named Bowery Alliance of Neighbors (BAN) in association with the community-based housing organization called the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council led the effort for creation of the historic district. The designation means that property owners will have financial incentives to restore rather than demolish old buildings on the Bowery.[37] BAN was recognized for its preservation efforts with a Village Award from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation in 2013.[38] The historic district runs from Chatham Square to Astor Place on both sides of the Bowery.[36]
Little Saigon
New York's "Little Saigon", though not officially designated, exists on the Bowery between Grand Street and Hester Street.[39]New York magazine claims that while this street blends in with neighboring Chinatown, the area is filled with Vietnamese restaurants.[40]
Notable places
Crowds along the "Bowery at night," c. 1895 painting by William Louis Sonntag, Jr.
This company, founded in 1948 by Tony Amato and his wife, Sally, found a permanent home at 319 Bowery next to the former CBGB and afforded many young singers the opportunity to hone their craft in full-length productions with a cut-down orchestration. The curtain fell on this well-established NYC opera forum on May 31, 2009, when Tony Amato retired.
Bank buildings
The Bowery Savings Bank was chartered in May 1834, when the Bowery was an upscale residential street, and grew with the rising prosperity of the city.[41] Its 1893 headquarters building at 130 Bowery is an official New York City designated landmark,[42] as is the 1920s domed Citizens Savings Bank.[43]
The Bowery Ballroom is a music venue. The structure, at 6 Delancey Street, was built just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it became a high-end retail store. The neighborhood subsequently went into decline again, and so did the caliber of businesses occupying the space.[44] In 1997 it was converted into a music venue. It has a capacity of 550 people.[45]
The club serves as the namesake of at least one recording: Joan Baez's Bowery Songs album, recorded live at a concert at the Bowery Ballroom in November 2004.
The Bowery Mural is an outdoor exhibition space located on the corner of Houston Street and the Bowery, on a wall owned by Goldman Properties since 1984. Real estate developer Tony Goldman began the project with Jeffery Deitch and Deitch Projects in 2008. Goldman's goal was to use this wall to present the top contemporary artists from around the world, with an emphasis on artists who work on the streets. Seasonal murals have appeared on the wall curated and organized in collaboration with The Hole, NYC, an art gallery in SoHo run by former Deitch Projects directors Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman.
The mural series was initiated from March to December 2008 with a tribute to Keith Haring’s noted 1982 Bowery mural. This was followed by a mural by the Brazilian twin-brother duo Os Gêmeos, which they dedicated to artist Dash Snow, who had recently died from a drug overdose; this was presented from July 2009 to March 2010. The next mural, by Shepard Fairey, was on exhibit from April through August 2010, and was followed by a mural by Barry McGee which celebrated the role of graffiti tagging in the history of New York City street art; it was on display from August to November 2010. This was followed by a tribute to Dash Snow by Irak, which ran from November 24–26, 2010.[46] Other artists to have murals presented include the twins How & Nosm (2012), Crash (2013), Martha Cooper (2013), Revok and Pose (2013), Swoon (2014), and Maya Hayuk.[47][48]
Bowery Poetry is a performance space at Bowery and Bleecker Street. It was founded in 2001 as Bowery Poetry Club (BPC), and provided a home base for established and upcoming artists. It was founded by Bob Holman, owner of the building and former Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Slam MC (1988–1996). The BPC featured regular shows by Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman, Taylor Mead, Taylor Mali, along with open mic, gay poets, a weekly poetry slam, and an Emily Dickinson Marathon, amongst other events. The club closed in 2012 and reopened in 2013 as a shared performance space under the name "Bowery Poetry". Bowery Arts + Science presents poetry, and Duane Park presents alternative burlesque in this space.[49]
The Bowery Theatre was a 19th-century playhouse at 46 Bowery. It was founded in the 1820s by rich families to compete with the upscale Park Theatre. By the 1850s, the theatre came to cater to immigrant groups such as the Irish, Germans, and Chinese. It burned down four times in 17 years, and a fire in 1929 destroyed it for good.
CBGB, a club that was opened to play country, bluegrass & blues (as the name CBGB stands for), began to book Television, Patti Smith, and the Ramones as house bands in the mid-1970s. This spawned a full-blown scene of new bands (Talking Heads, Blondie, edgy R&B-influenced Mink DeVille, rockabillyrevivalistRobert Gordon, and others) performing mostly original material in a mostly raw and often loud and fast attack. The label of punk rock was applied to the scene even if not all the bands that made their early reputations at the club were punk rockers, strictly speaking, but CBGB became known as the American cradle of punk rock. CBGB closed on October 31, 2006, after a long battle by club owner Hilly Kristal to extend its lease. The space is now a John Varvatosboutique.
Miner's Bowery Theatre was a vaudeville or variety show theater opened by Senator Henry Clay Miner in 1878.[50] The theater was known for its method of encouraging anyone to get on stage and perform on amateur nights, and for its method of removing bad performers from the stage by yanking them off with a wooden hook.[51] Starting in the 1890s, a stage-prop shepherd's hook was used to pull bad performers bodily from the stage, after audience members shouted, "Give 'im the hook."[51] The phrase, "Give him the hook" originated at Miners Bowery Theatre.[51]
In December 2007, the New Museum opened the doors of its new location at 235 Bowery, at Prince Street, continuing its focus of exhibiting international and women artists and artists of color. This new facility, designed by the Tokyo-based firmSejima + Nishizawa/SANAA and the New York-based firm Gensler, has greatly expanded the museum's exhibitions and space. In March 2008, the museum's new building was named one of the architectural seven wonders by Conde Nast Traveler.[52] The museum has an ongoing Bowery Project honoring artists who lived on the Bowery with taped interviews and archived records.[53]
William S. Burroughs kept an apartment at the former YMCA building at 222 Bowery, known as "The Bunker", from 1974 until he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1981.
Owen Kildare American writer whose short stories and novels described the grim realities of life in a New York slum, known as "the Mr. Bounderby of American Letters"[54] and "the Kipling of the Bowery".[55]
Haoui Montaug, doorman-to-the-stars, lived at the corner of the Bowery and East 2nd Street. He committed suicide in his apartment after inviting 20 guests for the occasion.[56][57]
Joey Ramone resided in the area, and in 2003 a part of 2nd Street near the intersection of Bowery and 2nd Street was renamed Joey Ramone Place.[58][59]
Terry Richardson lives in his studio on Bowery south of Houston Street.
The Wild Cards series of books sets the Bowery as Jokertown, the place where the malformed go to live after the Wild Card Virus is released over New York.
Brenda Coultas' 2003 book of poetry, A Handmade Museum, contains a section called "the Bowery Project" which documents the pre-gentrification process.
Music
Over the years, the Bowery has been mentioned in the lyrics of a number of songs, including the Bob Dylan song "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", from the album Bringing It All Back Home (1965): "I walked by a Guernsey cow / Who directed me down / To the Bowery slums / Where people carried signs around / Saying, 'Ban the bums.'"
Exuma, Bahamian folk singer and then resident of New York City has a song called "The Bowery" in his 1971 album Doo Wah Nanny. It describes the place as a "skid row".
The phrase "On the Bowery", which has since fallen into disuse, was a generic way to say one was down-and-out. It originated in the song "The Bowery" from the 1891 musical A Trip to Chinatown,[62] which includes the chorus "The Bow'ry, The Bow'ry!/They say such things,/and they do strange things/on the Bow'ry, the Bow’ry!/I’ll never go there anymore.”".[63]
A crime lord known as the Bowery King, portrayed by Laurence Fishburne, is a major character in the John Wick franchise.[66]
The Bowery Boys were a group of characters featured in a long-running series of 48 low-budget, comedic films, primarily produced by Monogram Pictures. While the films themselves weren't always set in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City, the name "Bowery Boys" was a nod to the characters' origins as Bowery B'hoys, a type of street gang from that area in the mid-19th century.
Art
The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, a collection of photographs and poems by Martha Rosler.[67]
Advertising
In the 1960s, radio and television commercials for the Bowery Savings Bank featured a jingle with the lyrics "The Bowery, The Bowery / The Bowery pays a lot / The Bowery pays you 6% / Commercial banks in New York simply do not." The number changed according to the amount of interest available on a passbook savings account offered by the bank.
Wrestling
Professional wrestler Raven is kayfabe billed as being from the Bowery. The professional wrestler Scott Levy, however, was born in Philadelphia and lives in Atlanta.[68]
Podcasting
The Bowery Boys: New York City History is a New York history podcast started in 2007 by Tom Meyers and Greg Young, who were both living on the Lower East Side at the time next to the Bowery.
The Bowery Theatre was a playhouse on the Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Although it was founded by rich families to compete with the upscale Park Theatre, the Bowery saw its most successful period under the populist, pro-American management of Thomas Hamblin in the 1830s and 1840s. By the 1850s, the theatre came to cater to immigrant groups such as the Irish, Germans, and Chinese. It burned down four times in 17 years, a fire in 1929 destroying it for good. Although the theatre's name changed several times (Thalia Theatre, Fay's Bowery Theatre, etc.), it was generally referred to as the "Bowery Theatre".
Founding and early management
1826 New York Theatre, by architect Ithiel Town
By the mid-1820s, wealthy settler families in the new ward that was made fashionable by the opening of Lafayette Street, parallel to the Bowery, wanted easy access to fashionable high-class European drama, then only available at the Park Theatre. Under the leadership of Henry Astor, they formed the New York Association and bought the land where Astor's Bull's Head Tavern stood,[1] facing the neighborhood and occupying the area between Elizabeth, Canal (then called Walker), and Bayard streets.[2] They hired architect Ithiel Town to design the new venue.
The new playhouse, with its Neoclassical design,[4] was more opulent than the Park, and it seated 3,500 people, making it the biggest theatre in the United States at the time.[5]Frances Trollope compared it to the Park Theatre as "superior in beauty; it is indeed as pretty a theatre as I ever entered, perfect as to size and proportion, elegantly decorated, and the scenery and machinery equal to any in London...."[6]
The Bowery Theatre opened on October 22, 1826, under the name New York Theatre, with the comedy The Road to Ruin by Thomas Holcroft, under the management of Charles A. Gilfert. New York Mayor Philip Hone spoke at the opening ceremony, imploring the theatre's intended upper-class audience: "It is therefore incumbent upon those whose standing in society enables them to control the opinions and direct the judgment of others, to encourage, by their countenance and support, a well-regulated theatre."[7] Its first few seasons were devoted to ballet, opera, and high drama. The theatre was by this time quite fashionable, and the northward expansion of Manhattan gave the theatre access to a large patronage. The theatre burnt down on the evening of May 26, 1828,[8]: 569 but was rebuilt by the architect Joseph Sera and reopened under the name Bowery Theatre on August 20, 1828.[8]: 602 [9][4] Gilfert's understanding of advertising was keen, but in 1829 the owners fired him.
Hamblin's tenure
Bowery Theatre of 1828, from Bourne Views of New York (1830–31)
The owners hired Thomas Hamblin and James H. Hackett in August 1830 to manage the theatre. A month later, Hackett left Hamblin in complete control. After the Bowery burned down later that year, Hamblin rebuilt. He then took the theatre in a decidedly different direction for what would be its most innovative and successful period.
Bowery Theatre of 1845, shown in 1856
American theatres stratified in the Jacksonian Era, and the Bowery emerged as the home of American nativists and populist causes, placing it in direct contrast to the Park Theatre's cultivated image of traditional European high culture. This was partially the result of an anti-British theatre riot at the Park; Hamblin renamed the playhouse "the American Theatre, Bowery" in reaction. Hamblin hired unknown American actors and playwrights and allowed them to play for long runs of up to a month. Before 1843, early blackface performers such as George Washington Dixon and Thomas D. Rice played there frequently, and acts such as J. B. Booth, Edwin Forrest, Louisa Lane Drew, and Frank Chanfrau also gained renown on the Bowery's stage. George L. Fox and his pantomime became the most popular act at the Bowery until after the Civil War. Bowery productions also debuted or popularized a number of new character types, including the Bowery B'hoy, the Yankee, the Frontiersman, and the blackface Negro.
The pro-Americanism of the Bowery's audience came to a head during the Farren Riots of 1834. Farren,[10] the Bowery's British-born stage manager, had reportedly made anti-American comments and fired an American actor. Protesters reacted by attacking the homes, businesses, and churches of abolitionists and blacks in New York City and then storming the theatre on July 9. Farren apologized for his comments, and George Washington Dixon sang popular songs to quell the rioters.
Hamblin defied conventions of theatre as high culture by booking productions that appealed to working-class patrons and by advertising them extensively according to Gilfert's model. Animal acts, blackface minstrel shows, and melodrama enjoyed the most frequent billings, and hybrid forms, such as melodramas about dogs saving their human masters, became unprecedented successes. Spectacular productions with advanced visual effects, including water and fire, featured prominently. Hamblin also innovated by using gas lighting in lieu of candles and kerosene lamps. The Bowery Theatre earned the nickname "The Slaughterhouse" for its low-class offerings, and terms like "Bowery melodrama" and "Bowery actors" were coined to characterize the new type of theatre.[11]
In the spring of 1834, Hamblin began buying shares in the theatre from the New York Association; he had enough to control the enterprise completely within 18 months. By the time the Bowery burned again in September 1836, it was the most popular playhouse in New York City,[12] despite steep increases in competition (the Bowery Amphitheatre was right across the street). Visual spectacle had become such an integral part of its appeal that Hamblin claimed $5,000 in wardrobe losses from the fire.[13] Hamblin bought out the remaining shares in the theatre and rented the site to W. E. Dinneford and Thomas Flynn, who rebuilt. When this interim Bowery burned down on February 18, 1838,[14] Hamblin replaced it with a bigger and more opulent structure, which opened in May 1839.
Through Hamblin's actions, working-class theatre emerged as a form in its own right, and melodrama became the most popular form of American theatre. Low-class patrons such as Bowery b'hoys and g'hals predominated in the audience. The Spirit of the Times described the Bowery's patrons:
Thalia Theatre, which was destroyed in 19291905 map of the block between Elizabeth (west) & Bowery (east), Bayard (south) and Canal (north), showing the Thalia Theatre just south of large yellow area representing the Atlantic Garden.
By reasonable computation there were about 300 persons on the stage and wings alone—soldiers in fatigue dresses—officers with side arms—a few jolly tars, and a number of 'apple-munching urchins.' The scene was indescribably ludicrous. Booth played [Richard III] in his best style, and was really anxious to make a hit, but the confusion incidental to such a crowd on the stage, occasioned constant and most humorous interruptions. It was every thing or any thing, but a tragedy. In the scene with Lady Anne, a scene so much admired for its address, the gallery spectators amused themselves by throwing pennies and silver pieces on the stage, which occasioned an immense scramble among the boys, and they frequently ran between King Richard and Lady Anne, to snatch a stray copper. In the tent scene, so solemn and so impressive, several curious amateurs went up to the table, took up the crown, poised the heavy sword, and examined all the regalia with great care, while Richard was in agony from the terrible dream; and when the scene changed, discovering the ghosts of King Henry, Lady Anne and children, it was difficult to select them from the crowd who thrust their faces and persons among the Royal shadows. The Battle of Bosworth Field capped the climax—the audience mingled with the soldiers and raced across the stage, to the shouts of the people, the roll of the drums and the bellowing of the trumpets; and when the fight between Richard and Richmond came on, they made a ring round the combattants to see fair play, and kept them at if for nearly a quarter of an hour by "Shrewsberry clock."[15]
Some sources even suggest that patrons engaged in sexual behavior in the lobbies and boxes.[16] Understandably, Hamblin was careful to remain in this crowd's good graces. For example, he regularly offered use of the Bowery Theatre for the annual firemen's ball. Only the Chatham Garden Theatre boasted a rowdier audience.[17]
Profits were harder to come by in the 1840s, as more playhouses sprung up in New York. Hamblin staged more effects-driven melodrama and later increased bookings of circus acts, minstrel shows, and other variety entertainments. The Bowery burned down once more in April 1845.[18] This time, Hamblin had fire insurance, and he rebuilt with an eye toward appealing to a more upscale patronage and to staging more spectacular melodrama. The theatre now seated 4,000 and with a stage 126 feet (38 m) square, secured its place as one of the largest playhouses in the world.[5] The architect and builder of the new theatre was John M. Trimble.[19] Hamblin left the management to A. W. Jackson, though Jackson and later managers largely upheld Hamblin's emphasis on melodrama and visual splendor. Hamblin died in January 1853, and the theatre remained in his family until 1867.
Successful plays of Hamblin's tenure included:
The Elephant of Siam and the Fire Fiend by Samuel Beazley, which featured the elephant Mademoiselle D'Jeck and ran for 18 consecutive performances in early 1831.[20]
Mazeppa, Or, The Wild Horse of Ukraine, which debuted on July 22, 1833, and had 43 consecutive performances, an astounding feat for its time.[20]
By the middle of the 19th century, immigrant groups, notably the Irish, began populating the Bowery neighborhood. They came to form a significant portion of the Bowery's audience, mostly in the low-price gallery section. In order to cater to them, the theatre offered plays by James Pilgrim and other Irish playwrights. Meanwhile, the Bowery emerged as the theatrical center for New York's Lower East Side.
In 1860 Gilbert R. Spalding and Charles J. Rogers took a three-year lease on the Bowery Theatre, which they renovated and fitted with a movable stage so as to be able to cater for both equestrian and dramatic performances. Among their acts were the trapeze artists François and Auguste Siegrist and the tight-rope dancer Marietta Zanfretta.[23] In January 1861 they staged the spectacular Tippoo Sahib, or, the Storming of Seringapatam with many trick transformations including a vast enemy encampment, an Indian jungle near the Taj Mahal and a bombardment by British forces with a charge on foot and horse.[24]
Germans Gustav Amberg, Heinrich Conried, and Mathilde Cottrelly converted the Bowery into the Thalia Theatre in 1879, offering primarily German theatre during their ownership. In 1891, Yiddish theatre became the predominant attraction. Italian vaudeville succeeded this, followed by Chinese vaudeville.
In 1894, Maria Roda addressed a large rally at the Thalia Theater celebrating Emma Goldman's release from prison. Although Roda spoke in Italian and Goldman understood none of it, she was moved by Roda's charismatic presence. She wrote, "Maria's strange beauty and the music of her speech roused the whole assembly to tensest enthusiasm. Maria proved a veritable ray of sunlight to me." She then pledged to become Maria Roda's "teacher, friend, comrade."[25]
In the 1910–20's, it was owned and managed by Feliciano Acierno and called "Acierno's Thalia Theatre". Acierno brought much of the Italian vaudeville to the stage.[citation needed]
"Fay's Bowery Theatre" burned down on June 5, 1929, under Chinese management and was never rebuilt.
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