Location Manhattan, New York Owner Bob Holman | Type Performance Arts venue Opened 2002 | |
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Genre(s) Poetry, Spoken Word, Slam Poetry, Hip-Hop, Experimental Theatre, Performance Art, Alternative Stand Up, Burlesque, Live Music Address 308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012, USA | ||
The Bowery Poetry Club was a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002 Located at 308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston Streets in Manhattan's East Village, the BPC was a popular meeting place for artists and aspiring artists.
Building history
The building was built in the 1850s as a lumber yard. Its last incarnation before becoming the BPC was as a formica tabletop manufacturer that ran on DC current. Plywood scraps were used to heat the building in a pot-belly stove.
In a 2002 New York Times article about the club, Holman talked about the then-risky choice to open the club on Bowery, which at the time was a "skid row":
The Bowery is a vein of change. Being blind is not the way to retain the aspects of the past that need to be honored. In order to change the world, you have to be in the world. As you get older, the risk of selling out and becoming part of that system stays real but it's mitigated by wanting to get in there and dig... I can't tell if we are making it in the big sense, but we're making an impression.
The Bowery Poetry Club closed for renovations on July 17, 2012 and re-opened in March 2013 as a joint performance venue with Duane Park, which relocated from TriBeCa. In the process, BPC dropped "Club" from its name, becoming "Bowery Poetry". The venue was to present Duane Park's burlesque performance through Saturday, with poetry presented on Saturday afternoons and on Sunday and Monday.
As of 2014, the poetry program at Bowery Poetry is presented by Bowery Arts + Science, an organization also founded by Bob Holman, the founder of Bowery Poetry Project.