Bowery, Manhattan NYC — Skid Row to Design District | 2026
The Bowery transformed from NYC's roughest street to a design district. See safety scores, noise data, and what residents say about living here.
Livability score
Grade C+, livability 49 out of 100.
Calm 25, ranked against built-up residential streets. Access 94, ranked against every street in the city. More complaints per home than most built-up residential streets, but a lot within a walk.
That puts Bowery in the bottom 45% of scored streets citywide.
Strongest on parking (63) and food nearby (100); cleanliness (0) is the weak spot.
On the record
Graffiti is the most-filed complaint on Bowery, with 217 reports, and cleanliness ranks 0 among built-up residential streets. HPD has cited 122 Class C violations here, the tier the city treats as an immediate health or safety risk, about 12 per 100 homes on file. Since 2021, 168 people have been injured in reported crashes. On the other side, parking ranks 63 among built-up residential streets. About 25% of the 1,009 homes on file are rent-stabilized.
Scores are built from 311 complaints, HPD violations, NYPD crash records, MTA stop locations, DOHMH food permits, and the street tree census, divided by the homes and businesses on the street, updated weekly. Read the scoring method or the data sources.
View the full interactive report with street-level data on BestageStreet NYC, covering safety, noise, and cleanliness scores for 5,700+ NYC streets from 5M+ 311 reports.