NYC’s Oldest Thoroughfare

NYC’s Oldest Thoroughfare. From Footpath to Streetcars and Elevated Trains. , “To see the Bowery in its glory, one must visit it at night. It is a blazer of light from one end to the other.” , -James D.McCabe, New York by Sunlight and Gaslight, 1882, Originally a Native American footpath, Dutch farm road (bouwerji means farm), and lower stretch of the Boston Post Road, the Bowery is NYC’s oldest thoroughfare. It has seen nearly every type of transportation from stagecoaches and street cars to elevated trains and automobiles. Its most famous travelers were General Washington and his troops, who triumphantly marched down the Bowery as British troops evacuated Manhattan on November 25, 1783., America’s first streetcars, which were horse-drawn, began runs on Bowery between Prince and 14th Street in 1832. In 1878, one of the city’s first elevated train lines was constructed above the Bowery’s sidewalks. Shadows cast by “the El” ands soot from its steam engines made an already gritty street more so. Nonetheless, when Edison electrified the street in 1882, the effect at night was said to be dazzling., The majestic approach to the Manhattan bridge is considered one of the most beautiful in the country. Completed in 1915, it was designed by Carrere and Hastings, with its triumphal Beaux Arts arch and colonnade patterned after the Porte St. Denis in Paris and the Bernini columns in Rome.