Co-sponsored by the Merchant’s House Museum and St. Mark’s Church

Join us for a fascination exploration of New York’s oldest street with David Mulkins as he speaks about his new book The Bowery, a new addition to the book series Images of America.

Stretching 1.25 miles from Chatham Square to Cooper Square, the Bowery 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.

There will be a special musical performance by ragtime pianist Ramona Baker.

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.