The Bowery Ballroom

The Bowery Ballroom occupies a building constructed in 1929, just weeks before the stock market crash that signaled the start of the Great Depression. Its original purpose was far from the world of rock and roll, as it opened as a high-end retail space for a business called Tree-Mark Shoes. You can still see the name Tree-Mark Shoes engraved into the stonework near the top of the building, a remnant of its original life before it stood vacant for decades.