How things looked one wet night on the Bowery

A shapely woman holding (posing?) with an umbrella in front of a brightly lit store window. A statue outside a cigar store.

Car lights up ahead, under the hulking steel tracks of the elevated train, making the Bowery appear darker and more ominous than usual.

And in the background beyond the cigar store are at least two men, forced by the rain and probably circumstance into the shadows of New York’s most blighted skid row at the time.

This is how John Sloan saw the Bowery one wet night in 1911.

Tags: Bowery Elevated Train, Bowery history, Bowery NYC, Bowery Skid Row, Cigar Store Indian Statue, Forgotten Men, John Sloan New York, John Sloan Wet Night on the Bowery