The disreputable ghosts of Boweries past-the gangsters, vagabonds and punk rockers who saw the street shape—shift over the past century and a half—likely have more in common with each other than with the citizens of the Bowery lately. The last few years’ barrage of the new (new luxury condos, new cuisine, the boxy metal lines of the New Museum) is revealed in the worlds traversed from block to block: One cross street up and you’ve gone from overcrowded industrial kitchen suppliers to minimalist boutiques displaying Rodarte and Brian Reyes.
But whether it’s a designer boutique’s glass-enshrined relics of CBGB or a trendy new club’s flophouse aesthetic, the old Bowery hasn’t been forgotten altogether—it’s reassembled into industrial-chic window-dressing for the new.
