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 (64) and food nearby (100). Cleanliness (0) is the weak spot.
On the record
More 311 reports on Bowery name graffiti than any other category, 217 of them, and cleanliness ranks 0 among built-up residential streets. The whole 311 file on Bowery holds 1,341 reports, and graffiti is 16% of it. Illegal parking follows with 152 reports, and commercial noise with 134. Reports on Bowery span 90 distinct 311 categories. Set against the 1,009 homes on file, that is about 133 reports per 100 homes.
Inspectors have written 98 Class C violations on Bowery, the tier the city treats as an immediate health or safety risk, about 10 per 100 homes on file. HPD's most-cited category on Bowery is doors, at 66 violations. Pests follows at 45 violations, then bed bugs at 30. City housing records put 1,009 homes in 104 residential buildings on Bowery, 9 of them walk-up apartment buildings and 6 of them buildings with an elevator. The average building on Bowery holds about 9.7 homes.
Since 2021, 168 people have been injured in reported crashes here.
Against built-up residential streets, housing comes in at 46, with traffic safety at 7. That 7 on traffic safety puts Bowery in the weakest quarter of built-up residential streets. Measured against built-up residential streets, infrastructure sits at 36 and quietness at 28. Transit ranks 97 and tree cover 76, both against every street in the city rather than inside the band. Of the three measures ranked citywide, food nearby is the strongest on Bowery, at 100. Bowery is ranked against about 790 built-up residential streets citywide.
Parking is where Bowery ranks best against built-up residential streets, at 64.
The housing file puts 25% of the 1,009 homes on Bowery in rent stabilization, 253 homes in all.
Scores are built from 311 complaints, HPD violations, NYPD crash records, NYPD felony complaint 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.
Nearest streets in Manhattan
- Broome Street, Manhattan
- Chrystie Street, Manhattan
- Mott Street, Manhattan
- Delancey Street, Manhattan
- Mulberry Street, Manhattan
- Eldridge Street, Manhattan
Bowery runs through SoHo, Chinatown and Lower East Side, where every scored street in the neighborhood is ranked beside it.
Every scored street in Manhattan, the citywide rankings of all 5,700+ graded streets, or Manhattan vs Brooklyn: How the Two Boroughs Score (2026 Data).