Alabama House

219 Bowery | Lower East Side | built 1920

Open on the map3 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1889

    James Ware designs the Alabama House, a Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne pair at 219-221 Bowery

    The twin five-story buildings at 219-221 Bowery went up in 1889 to designs by James Ware, the architect credited with inventing New York's dumbbell tenement. Ephemeral New York describes the Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne structure with decorative panels, bays and pilasters. It opened as a lodging house called the Alabama, on a Bowery already lined with cheap bars, dance halls and theaters under the elevated train.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  2. 1960

    The Alabama flophouse still rents rooms to Bowery men for 80 cents a night

    The Alabama joined a long line of Bowery lodging houses where poor men could sleep for a dime or less through much of the twentieth century. By 1960 a room still cost just 80 cents a night. A New York Times article of the period called the street's residents gentle men, sherry drinkers and the slightly unbalanced, many of whom would be moved elsewhere after 1967.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  3. 1967

    The Alabama Hotel, where derelicts slept, is converted into artists' lofts

    In 1967 the Times reported that the Alabama Hotel, as the old flophouse was now called, would be converted into artists' lofts, in a story about a former Bowery hotel where derelicts once slept turning into artist studios. Decades later the ground-floor windows carried faded painted ads for restaurant fixtures such as bar benches and coffee urns, left by a restaurant-supply company on the Bowery's supply row.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

Further reading

Nearby

All 78 buildings with stories in Lower East Side