Preservation Watch

The Bowery was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places, and though it may seem like much of the "old" Bowery is gone, that's not entirely true. Author Luc Sante, who wrote about the area in "Low Life," recently said: "Once you start really looking, there is quite a bit left: the Bowery Mission, the former Y.M.C.A. across the street, where William Burroughs once lived, the extraordinary Fortress of Solitude at the corner of Spring Street, the ex-Bowery Savings Bank at Grand Street, and many humbler but still solid edifices that once contained flophouses and saloons and employment agencies, many of which are inhabited by artists who restored them back when such things were affordable to common humans." [NYT; previously]