Bowery Mission's first home
14 Bowery | Chinatown | built 1915
Open on the map3 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1790
A late-18th-century Georgian rowhouse at 14 Bowery is raised and flattened in the 1800s
Number 14 Bowery began as a three-bay Georgian rowhouse of about three and a half stories, with Flemish bond brickwork and splayed stone lintels. In the late nineteenth century its peaked roof was replaced by a flat fourth floor and a bracketed cornice, turning it into a four-story commercial building. It matches the style and era of the nearby Mooney House at 18 Bowery, which kept its historic roofline.
Source: National Register nomination
- 1879
The Rev. Albert Ruliffson and Ellen Ruliffson open the Bowery Mission in a small room at 14 Bowery
In 1879 Albert Gleason Ruliffson and his wife Ellen Dorchester Ruliffson started the Bowery Mission in a small room at 14 Bowery. It was the second rescue mission in New York, after Jerry McAuley's Water Street Mission of 1872, and the third in the United States. The mission moved to 36 Bowery in 1880 and later to other addresses on the street. It still serves the Bowery today from 227 Bowery.
“…opened the mission in a small room at 14 Bowery…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1879
The mission opens on the Bowery block between Chatham Square and Bayard Street, packed with vice
A 1906 account quoted in the Bowery Historic District nomination describes the block where the mission opened as crowded with eight concert halls, five gambling houses, seven saloons and nine rough hotels. The same account says every house on neighboring Bayard Street was a den of ill repute. The Whyo, Cherry Hill and Five Points gangs reportedly kept their headquarters nearby and sometimes fought in the streets.
“In that one block, Chatham Square to Bayard Street, were eight concert halls; five gambling houses; four fake museum…”
Source: National Register nomination
Nearby
- 12 Bowery1 entry
- 16 Bowery1 entry
- Edward Mooney House18 Bowery | 6 entries
- 8 Bowery1 entry
- 9 Pell Street1 entry
- Olliffe's Pharmacy site6 Bowery | 2 entries