Bowery, Lower East Side

Bowery in the Lower East Side starts just south of Houston. It used to be one of the biggest slums in Manhattan but now the area around Bowery is really trendy though not exactly high end. The street does start off with one high end building though: the Avalon Chrystie. This Avalon building isn't as nice as the Avalon Bowery but it's still really nice and really expensive. A lot more of these high end apartment rises have started popping up in the neighborhood but the street is still mostly the old slum buildings converted into really expensive apartments of the same size as the slums. There used to be 16 bars on Bowery in the first block of LES around the turn of the 19th century. Now this block is mostly restaurant supply stores. The sixteen bars in one block are saved for streets like Stanton nowadays, I suppose. There's a great Mexican joint called Mole on this first block that I used to go to all the time when I lived in the area. It's really small but really cute and the food is pretty good (for New York mexican).
The next block (around Stanton) holds the New Museum -- I saw a fantastic art exhibit there last year -- and a lot of commercial spaces. Congee Brewery is about halfway down the block. It's an outpost of Congee on Allen and if you can't get a table at that one, then this one is a fine substitute. There's a building on the corner of Spring and Bowery that has a really interesting story and it's a really pretty building so I guess it deserves a good story. The Germania Bank building was built at the end of the 19th century and had been abandoned for quite some time when a photographer bought it for about 100,000 in 1966. He still lives there with his family. The building has 72 rooms and is worth about $50 million dollars today. That is so crazy to me. I would totally sell that building if I were him.
The next block down seems to be the place to go to get just about anything you would ever need to build a hotel. The whole block is restaurant supply, carpet, lighting, you name it. Not one bar or restaurant in the bunch. There are a few little hotels that all used to be flophouses dispersed throughout Bowery, but the street is largely weird home improvement kinds of stores.
Speaking of hotels, the longest running hotel in Manhattan is on Bowery at Broome. It's called Sohotel and it used to be a flophouse but has been renting rooms since 1805.
There's really not much to talk about on Bowery in the Lower East Side because, like most major avenues, there isn't a lot going on. I wouldn't want to live on Bowery because of the noise, people and trash. And, Bowery is one of the least exciting streets in a neighborhood that has an awful lot going on.