Overview
"The Bowery" is a song from the musical A Trip to Chinatown with music by Percy Gaunt and lyrics by Charles H. Hoyt. The musical toured the country for several years and then opened on Broadway in 1891.
Description
The song is written in 3/4 time in a major key. The lyrics describe an incident in New York City and have nothing to do with the plot, a story set in San Francisco. They consist of six verses interspersed with the chorus, which ends with the vow:
The Bowery, the Bowery,
I'll never go there anymore!
Although the Bowery neighbourhood of New York City was where theater life flourished from about 1860 to 1875, by the 1880s it had become a sordid district. The experience of the singer is described in part by the Village Voice:
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).