The Bowery,

1928

<p> Made before the stock market crash of 1929, Marsh’s lithograph shows that the boom times of the Roaring Twenties were not prosperous for all. Men in ruffled coats and hats huddle on a street in New York’s Bowery, then an impoverished area known for its nightlife and speakeasies. A 1927 article cruelly called the Bowery “the nadir of the city,” where “reeling helpless drunks . . . fall helpless on the pavement, as if they were articles of human garbage.” An article published the previous year argued instead that the area was “not a sordid slum,” as many believed, but a “happy haven for hundreds of men of modest means.” An advocate of the working class and frequent contributor to Marxist publications, Marsh avoids caricature or ridicule in <em>The Bowery</em>, offering a more sympathetic view. </p>