YMCA Building

—222 Bowery —

A designated New York City landmark, this Queen Anne-style building opened on October 15, 1885 as the Young Men's Institute, a branch of the YMCA. Featuring a gymnasium, bowling alley, library, entertainment hall, and rooftop garden, the Institute was created, in the words of the New-York Daily Tribune, "as an offset to the cheap amusement resorts" then proliferating along the Bowery. While YMCA missions at 134, 153 and 243 Bowery did rescue work, the Institute stressed prevention, with vocational classes and a lecture series that featured Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Ward Beecher.
Vacated by the YMCA during the early 1930s, the structure began attracting painters such as Fernand Leger, who used one of its loft spaces as a studio. From 1958 to 1959, Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko painted the murals originally intended for Midtown's Seagram Building here. Other residents have included poet John Giorno, visual artists Michael Goldberg and Lynn Umlauf, as well as Beat Generation writer William Burroughs, who famously dubbed his apartment, "the Bunker."
-David Freeland, author of Automats, Taxi Dancers & Vaudeville

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