{"id":3377,"date":"2011-11-15T01:00:08","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T06:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/?p=3377"},"modified":"2011-11-15T01:13:18","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T06:13:18","slug":"new-yorkhouston-street-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/new-yorkhouston-street-12\/","title":{"rendered":"New York\/Houston Street"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/journal\/2011\/grandtheftauto.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3379\" title=\"grandtheftauto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/grandtheftauto.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/grandtheftauto.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/grandtheftauto-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHouston and Bowery with Keith Haring \u00a0re-creation, 2008 &#8212; \u00a9 Brian Rose<\/p>\n<p>A year ago I discovered the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/new-yorkon-the-bowery-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">origins of the Houston\/Bowery wall<\/a>, a slab of concrete that hosts a regularly changing display of graffiti and street art in various media. The wall always seemed odd to me because it was free standing and stood a couple of feet away from the party wall of the building behind it. Where did it come from?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/hobowall.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"hobowall\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/hobowall.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"361\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a>Ray Salyer in\u00a0<em>On the Bowery<\/em>, handball court behind<\/p>\n<p>The answer came on a visit to Film Forum when I saw the great quasi-documentary film <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/new-yorkon-the-bowery\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>On the Bowery<\/em> <\/a>made in 1957 by Lionel Rogosin. In one of the scenes, Ray Salyer, the main character waits with a group of Bowery men looking to be picked up for day labor. Behind him a game of handball is being played against a detached wall, unmistakably the same wall that survives today, except that it is now encased in a more expansive and user-friendly surface. But underneath, the handball court wall remains.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zXsh2hqdQ3s\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nOpening scene from Martin Scorcese&#8217;s <em>Who&#8217;s That Knocking at My Door<\/em>, 1967<\/p>\n<p>Last week while putting together a slide show of Lower East Side images for a class I am teaching, I came across a video of the opening scene of Martin Scorcese&#8217;s first feature film\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Who's_That_Knocking_at_My_Door\" target=\"_blank\">Who&#8217;s That Knocking at My Door<\/a><\/em> made in 1967. It&#8217;s a street brawl&#8211;a choreographed violent \u00a0dance&#8211;played out on the corner of Houston and Bowery in front of, you guessed it, the former handball wall, now graffiti wall.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/journal\/2011\/savage.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3380\" title=\"savage\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/savage.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/savage.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/savage-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a>Houston and Bowery,<a href=\"http:\/\/failesites.net\/houston-bowery#0\" target=\"_blank\"> mural by Faile<\/a>, 2011 &#8212; \u00a9 Brian Rose<\/p>\n<p>As you \u00a0can see in the film and in the photograph above, Houston Street was widened after 1957 and the distance from the street to the wall was reduced. So, it turns out this lowly urban artifact has quite a distinguished pedigree, not only as the canvas for the current series of murals, but as an architectural extra in two classics of American cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Houston and Bowery with Keith Haring \u00a0re-creation, 2008 &#8212; \u00a9 Brian Rose A year ago I discovered the origins of the Houston\/Bowery wall, a slab of concrete that hosts a regularly changing display of graffiti and street art in various media. The wall always seemed odd to me because it was free standing and stood [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3377"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3392,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377\/revisions\/3392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianrose.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}