The Houston Bowery Wall

The Houston Bowery Wall stands as a fragment of a former handball court that once served a much grittier version of this neighborhood. In the nineteen fifties, the site was a desolate, rat-infested patch of ground frequently used by day laborers waiting for work. It eventually gained fame as a backdrop in classic cinema, appearing in the opening sequence of Martin Scorsese's nineteen sixty-seven film Who's That Knocking at My Door. Long before it became a curated canvas, this freestanding slab of concrete was a centerpiece of the local streetscape, existing as an architectural extra before the street was even widened and the surrounding area transformed.