Manhattan’s Lower East Side has never been a great neighborhood. At best, at the turn of the 20th century it was a tenement-ridden haven for the city’s new immigrants, and later a bargain district for shoppers from around the boroughs. For years, the only bright spots along the Bowery — the neighborhood’s notorious drag — were the much-loved but now-defunct Amato Opera and CBGB’s. Mainly, though, the area’s seedy establishments and crime-infested streets hosted locals and visitors partaking in not-so-highbrow activity.
But like so much in New York, all that has changed. While the Lower East Side’s affordable rents (by Manhattan standards) have lured artists for decades, recent years have witnessed an influx of galleries, creating a whole different kind of art scene. The completion of SANAA’s New Museum on the Bowery in 2007 was just the anchor the area needed to draw Chelsea’s heavyweights, long since driven out of SoHo’s once-mighty downtown gallery scene.
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