The Bowery Initiative
In 2001 and 2002, Place in History
undertook The Bowery Initiative, a collaborative public
history project designed to increase public awareness and
discussion of the complex past, dynamic present, and uncertain
future of the world's most famous skid row.
Enter here for
the Bowery Hall of Fame, a museum in miniature, assembled
from the remains of a Palace Hotel lodging house cubicle,
pilfered cultural artifacts, local propaganda, and bits of
historical documentation. Inside this tiny dwelling you will
discover strange and wonderful facts about the Bowery, its
inhabitants, its structures, its apocryphal history and its
unknowable future. From the nineteenth century slumming expeditions
of George Washington Chuck Connors, the Mayor of Chinatown,
to the modern-day exploits of urban professionals, this museum
offers the visitor an explicit view of the world's most famous
down-and-out boulevard. Built at a moment of profound physical,
social and economic change along the Bowery, the Hall of Fame
represents a portal into twenty-first century New York, a
place defined by its past yet persistently unfettered by it.
|
