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Flophouse: Life on the Bowery
"This book takes you to places you think you don't want to enter, to people you think you don't want to meet, to lives you think you don't want to live--and makes you rethink all your assumptions. It reveals the tremendous strength and humanity of those who are usually ignored. And as you pay attention, your own humanity expands."
---Susan Stamberg, special correspondent, National Public Radio
In its heyday, close to one hundred thousand men found shelter each night in flophouses along America's largest and most infamous skid row, the Bowery. Today, only a handful of flops are left, their tiny five- and ten-dollar-a-night rooms home to fewer than a thousand men, mostly long-time residents. In a handful of years, this world will be gone.
In Flophouse , documentarians David Isay and Stacy Abramson and photographer Harvey Wang chronicle this vanishing world through the voices and portraits of a number of those residents, interspersed with photographs of their surroundings. The men come from all manner of backgrounds, and the rich variety of the tales they tell is a testament to the number of ways the bottom can fall out of life in America, even in prosperous times. This book warrants comparison with Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, but the authors were inspired most directly by Joseph Mitchell, who wrote about some of these same flophouses with an honest warmth and an acceptance of life as it's found. Shimmering with humanity and utterly devoid of false sentiment, Flophouse is a powerful reminder that even on the margins, life defies all attempts at reduction.
---Susan Stamberg, special correspondent, National Public Radio
In its heyday, close to one hundred thousand men found shelter each night in flophouses along America's largest and most infamous skid row, the Bowery. Today, only a handful of flops are left, their tiny five- and ten-dollar-a-night rooms home to fewer than a thousand men, mostly long-time residents. In a handful of years, this world will be gone.
In Flophouse , documentarians David Isay and Stacy Abramson and photographer Harvey Wang chronicle this vanishing world through the voices and portraits of a number of those residents, interspersed with photographs of their surroundings. The men come from all manner of backgrounds, and the rich variety of the tales they tell is a testament to the number of ways the bottom can fall out of life in America, even in prosperous times. This book warrants comparison with Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, but the authors were inspired most directly by Joseph Mitchell, who wrote about some of these same flophouses with an honest warmth and an acceptance of life as it's found. Shimmering with humanity and utterly devoid of false sentiment, Flophouse is a powerful reminder that even on the margins, life defies all attempts at reduction.
176 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 1, 2015
Amazon is many things but one thing it is brilliant for is finding out of print and hard to find books. I remembered reading this account of lives on the Bowery back in the 90s and found it from a seller for a couple of bucks, a book that had once belonged to the Boston Public Library. This is an emotionally terrifying and humanly beautiful book. Each resident tells a piece of his story; the black and white photos are simple and truthful. If you're a fiction writer, you could dive into these nonfiction accounts and never run out of things to write. If you're human and you care about other humans, this book will pummel your heart. Trust me, you won't be able to look away.
March 24, 2019
This is not a novel nor is it a study of poverty. It is a book that allows some of the worst off in society to tell a bit about themselves and their outlook on life. Flop houses used to be common all across the country, but they have for the most part been destroyed. This book looks at some of the last few remaining in the US. The irony of course is that these $5-$10 a night hotels are in Manhattan and only blocks away from extreme wealth. This book is not heavy on text, and about half of it is made up of photos, but those photos add a certain sense of realism to the writing being told. In fact the entire book can probably be read in under an hour. Despite that, I highly recommend this book but it will not be for everyone. There is also a documentary made about the same people called the Sunshine Hotel that I recommend along with this.
July 7, 2014
There are certain self-destructive activities about which, by temperament, I simply haven't a clue, and topping that list are gambling, drinking, and doing drugs. This is by no means a moral position. Doing these things -- and at one time or another I've tried them all -- simply fills me with unease. Strangely, though, this very fact allows Flophouse to cast an almost hypnotic spell over me the moment I open it up. I feel as dizzy before its pages as I would gazing down the steep side of a cliff.
In concept, the book is simplicity itself. The authors, David Isay and Stacy Abramson, solicited testimony from the inhabitants of various Bowery flophouse hotels -- The White House, The Providence, The Andrews, and The Sunshine -- and Harvey Wang took brilliantly raw and unvarnished photographs of them and of the rooms and corridors in which they spend their days. Mostly, these men (there are no women) talk about their lives, about why they've ended up where they have, and about how they live now. Some are defensive, some nonchalant, some accusatory, some stolidly fatalistic. All of them are branded the same -- bottom-of-the-barrel -- and all of them know it. But each wears that brand in a different way.
If you've ever wondered into how small a space a man can fit his life -- and by this I mean someone not in prison or a monastary or some other situation which imposes a rigorous discipline beyond the particular individual's control, this book not only answers the question but expands it into a kind of a metaphysics. A flophouse cubicle is just big enough to hold a bunk and just enough space to stand next to it when the door is closed. But even in this claustral cell the self has as much room as needs to effloresce. Where our identity is leached out into rooms full of belongings, theirs is so concentrated that a single object -- a teddy bear, a television, a deck of cards -- rings like a bell. Here is space enough for spartan neatness or outrageous mess, for frank debauchery or equally ostentatious religiosity. Like the pharaohs, they have taken into their tombs with them everything they need for their afterlife.
For the most part, the owners of these hotels were reluctant to allow the authors access to any but the common rooms, and it is in these and the long dark corridors that a majority of the photographs are taken, with the occasional glance into the bathrooms or the desk clerk's cage. (Perhaps the most purely poignant of the photographs is one of shelves crammed with cheap stained old suitcases; a little flophouse within the flophouse, the inhabitants of which are as battered and forlorn -- and abandoned -- as their owners are.)
There is nothing horrific about these interiors -- even the bathrooms have the glint of regular if impersonal care -- but neither is there anything even faintly appealing about them. If the private spaces are concentrated with the personal almost beyond bearing, the public spaces are drained of anything but the most lackluster of significance. That chair is a chair and nothing else; it doesn't even have anything in common with the chair beside it except for having a back, a seat, and four legs. These things -- chairs, tables, cigarette machines -- are, like the indestructible seating in a bus terminal, about as close to pure property as things can get.
As for the residents themselves, some are scary, some are pitiable, a few are interesting beyond their plight, and one is dead. Some ignore their fellow lodgers, others watch on with knowing smiles, still others offer compassion and practical help -- running the occasional errand, lending a sympathetic ear. As in any bunch of strangers, you immediately pick out those to stay away from and those few who might become, however transitorily, a pal. You learn that there is a solidarity even in destitution, at least when you voluntarily put yourself in the company of those in the same situation. What the mental hospital takes away, the seemingly very similar Sunshine Hotel (love that name) gives back.
I don't drink or gamble or take drugs because, rightly or not, I tend to feel that the ground beneath my feet is tissue-thin and have no desire to test its tensile strength. The idea of the flophouse draws me the way it does because it shows how far down you can go and still find a place to call home. These men are many things but they are not homeless, and this means there is a point at which they are still capable of drawing a line. Spend some time with this book and you'll understand that this equally as likely bad news as it is good news -- but sometimes bad news is news enough to suffice.
In concept, the book is simplicity itself. The authors, David Isay and Stacy Abramson, solicited testimony from the inhabitants of various Bowery flophouse hotels -- The White House, The Providence, The Andrews, and The Sunshine -- and Harvey Wang took brilliantly raw and unvarnished photographs of them and of the rooms and corridors in which they spend their days. Mostly, these men (there are no women) talk about their lives, about why they've ended up where they have, and about how they live now. Some are defensive, some nonchalant, some accusatory, some stolidly fatalistic. All of them are branded the same -- bottom-of-the-barrel -- and all of them know it. But each wears that brand in a different way.
If you've ever wondered into how small a space a man can fit his life -- and by this I mean someone not in prison or a monastary or some other situation which imposes a rigorous discipline beyond the particular individual's control, this book not only answers the question but expands it into a kind of a metaphysics. A flophouse cubicle is just big enough to hold a bunk and just enough space to stand next to it when the door is closed. But even in this claustral cell the self has as much room as needs to effloresce. Where our identity is leached out into rooms full of belongings, theirs is so concentrated that a single object -- a teddy bear, a television, a deck of cards -- rings like a bell. Here is space enough for spartan neatness or outrageous mess, for frank debauchery or equally ostentatious religiosity. Like the pharaohs, they have taken into their tombs with them everything they need for their afterlife.
For the most part, the owners of these hotels were reluctant to allow the authors access to any but the common rooms, and it is in these and the long dark corridors that a majority of the photographs are taken, with the occasional glance into the bathrooms or the desk clerk's cage. (Perhaps the most purely poignant of the photographs is one of shelves crammed with cheap stained old suitcases; a little flophouse within the flophouse, the inhabitants of which are as battered and forlorn -- and abandoned -- as their owners are.)
There is nothing horrific about these interiors -- even the bathrooms have the glint of regular if impersonal care -- but neither is there anything even faintly appealing about them. If the private spaces are concentrated with the personal almost beyond bearing, the public spaces are drained of anything but the most lackluster of significance. That chair is a chair and nothing else; it doesn't even have anything in common with the chair beside it except for having a back, a seat, and four legs. These things -- chairs, tables, cigarette machines -- are, like the indestructible seating in a bus terminal, about as close to pure property as things can get.
As for the residents themselves, some are scary, some are pitiable, a few are interesting beyond their plight, and one is dead. Some ignore their fellow lodgers, others watch on with knowing smiles, still others offer compassion and practical help -- running the occasional errand, lending a sympathetic ear. As in any bunch of strangers, you immediately pick out those to stay away from and those few who might become, however transitorily, a pal. You learn that there is a solidarity even in destitution, at least when you voluntarily put yourself in the company of those in the same situation. What the mental hospital takes away, the seemingly very similar Sunshine Hotel (love that name) gives back.
I don't drink or gamble or take drugs because, rightly or not, I tend to feel that the ground beneath my feet is tissue-thin and have no desire to test its tensile strength. The idea of the flophouse draws me the way it does because it shows how far down you can go and still find a place to call home. These men are many things but they are not homeless, and this means there is a point at which they are still capable of drawing a line. Spend some time with this book and you'll understand that this equally as likely bad news as it is good news -- but sometimes bad news is news enough to suffice.
January 26, 2009
Fascinating, absorbing little photo book that documents the decline of NYC's Bowery hotels (or "flops"). Each page documents a different resident's oral testimony about how they got where they are, and what they think about it. The tableaux depicted in the photos are gorgeously decrepit, the language is vividly old-timey, and the stories span the gamut of human experience: funny, wistful, tragic, bizarre. The most poignant entry is of a reposed man on a bed, dead of a heroin overdose. Written by an NPR correspondent. (I got this crazy-cheap on Amazon -- $1, I think -- check there for good deals on this title.)
April 29, 2009
Another companion to all the New York reading I've been reading. The Bowery is an area that New York has grown around where poverty stricken men can still find a $5 room for a night, or for sixty years. Each page of this pictoral features the oral history of one of the men (almost without exception drug addicts, criminals, and the mentally ill) who live in these dives. How he got there and what he thinks about it. Like a train wreck, this is a place you don't want to go, but you can't help looking.
September 6, 2015
I'm a big fan of the podcast 99% Invisible. Recently they did something a little different and played the radio documentary The Sunshine Hotel by David Isay and Stacy Abramson. Originally broadcast in 1999, Sunshine documented one of the last remaining residence hotels in Manhattan. It is beautiful and touching and I have seldom been so moved by radio. This book is a magnificent companion to the audio work and fleshes out the documentary with photos and interviews. I highly recommend listening and reading.
October 4, 2012
Fascinating pictures and text. You think you wouldn't have anything in common with these men, but I could really relate to some of them. One man just wanted to go somewhere so he could just let his addiction take over. One fellow got too fat for his clothes- hadn't been able to leave the place in 2 years because his pants were too small. He goes around wrapped in a sheet. Many just want to be left alone. They are in a room a little bigger than a twin bed with chicken wire over the top to discourage "drunk divers".
July 6, 2009
bought this a the goodwill today,what a find!!!! I couldn't believe people actually lived like this it's so incredibly sad. The pictures in this book were really heartfelt,I can't believe I only paid $1.00 for this book it is worth so much more.This book will be a part of my permanent collection,which is rare for me usually I read a book and then get rid of it.Definitely a 5 star book.
August 2, 2025
This book opened up a new chapter in my understanding of the history of NYC. I knew of tenements having visited the Tenement Museum, but was not aware of flophouses. I knew the Bowery was an unsavory place where homeless would live - this pictorial book helped me to better understand their housing and a bit about those who lived in these flophouses.
When I tell my friends and colleagues of the existence of flophouses they are surprised that that existed and were in existence for such a long period of time.
The author showed great respect and dignity to the men who were presented in this book and did so without judgment. We as a society could learn much from his presentation. With homelessness on the rise, one wonders if there is a way to offer updated "flophouses" for those in need.
When I tell my friends and colleagues of the existence of flophouses they are surprised that that existed and were in existence for such a long period of time.
The author showed great respect and dignity to the men who were presented in this book and did so without judgment. We as a society could learn much from his presentation. With homelessness on the rise, one wonders if there is a way to offer updated "flophouses" for those in need.
June 14, 2025
This book was thrown away by someone and I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. It’s a series of vignettes of broken men, living in these flophouses for one reason or another. Fascinating, heavy, and filled with great photography too.
August 20, 2014
By now, you must have seen or heard about photographer Brandon Stanton’s project Humans of New York. Everyday, Stanton photographs a person in New York city and shares their story. I believe the project has become a massive success not just because of the images Stanton makes, but the relatability behind his subjects’ stories.
Much before HONY came in to the picture, however, radio host and writer Dave Isay set out to know more about the residents of the various flophouses or Bowery hotels in New York. These hotels house many residents for as low as USD 5 a night, thereby becoming permanent residents for several men. Fascinated by the lives of these housemates, Isay collaborated with writer Stacy Abramson and photographer Harvey Wang to document the stories of these men in flophouses.
Each spread is dedicated to a man, who tells us the story of why he is in the flophouse, accompanied by his photograph. These stories are incredibly moving, some men talking about being failures in life, others being happy and content with what they have. Harvey Wang’s images are understated. He is not intruding into the spaces of these men, instead he makes us feel as if we are among them.
One story that remains with me of a man named Ted Edwards. He says, “Do you know Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness? I decided on nothingness, because my being wasn’t being fulfilled in the way I wanted it to be. So I set out to be nothing. And here I am. I’ve arrived. Nothing. Nothing!”
Much before HONY came in to the picture, however, radio host and writer Dave Isay set out to know more about the residents of the various flophouses or Bowery hotels in New York. These hotels house many residents for as low as USD 5 a night, thereby becoming permanent residents for several men. Fascinated by the lives of these housemates, Isay collaborated with writer Stacy Abramson and photographer Harvey Wang to document the stories of these men in flophouses.
Each spread is dedicated to a man, who tells us the story of why he is in the flophouse, accompanied by his photograph. These stories are incredibly moving, some men talking about being failures in life, others being happy and content with what they have. Harvey Wang’s images are understated. He is not intruding into the spaces of these men, instead he makes us feel as if we are among them.
One story that remains with me of a man named Ted Edwards. He says, “Do you know Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness? I decided on nothingness, because my being wasn’t being fulfilled in the way I wanted it to be. So I set out to be nothing. And here I am. I’ve arrived. Nothing. Nothing!”
May 22, 2009
This was a pretty fitting companion piece to all the beat literature I was reading at the time. Except this was the unromanticized, uncut, abysmally depressing side of trying to take the path of excess to the temple of wisdom. Depressing in that way that seems somehow necessary to engage and then somehow subsequently appears beautiful. Tragically beautiful, perhaps. And I suppose it was just plain fascinating for a suburban kid who'd never been aware that such a world as the bowery exists. But I repeat, I did not naively romanticize it either.
June 11, 2008
After reading this book I got a new view on poverty. The personal stories are amazing and the photography is fantastic too. It's fascinating to walk down the Bowery and see some of the old flophouses that are still around next to such expensive property and wealth.
March 14, 2010
This is a tough book to look through. How does one end up living in a flophouse? What kind of lifestyle is it? Some answers are offered in this volume through words and pictures, although the hollow-eyed look of most of the men in these pages speak more than anything else.
April 7, 2007
So incredibly depressing. But also a really interesting look at the ways in which New York is changing and how the other half lives.
April 9, 2007
Weirdly interesting and completely depressing. A look at a seemingly timeless part of new york, where everything else around the flophouses has changed, but they themselves remain the same.
September 26, 2007
amazing photos!!! Tells personal stories of the men (chronically homeless) who make up "The Bowery."
April 25, 2009
Beautiful photos and stories.
July 15, 2010
Wonderful insight into the Bowery and it's flophouses. Hard to digest, but an amazing profile of people living (sometimes for decades) in these "hotels".
May 27, 2012
Excellent book, very insightful, never boring.
Introduces the residents of the flop houses in New York. Quite sad to read how life turns out for some people.
The photos are brilliant.
Introduces the residents of the flop houses in New York. Quite sad to read how life turns out for some people.
The photos are brilliant.
September 20, 2024
Masterful, as with other Harvey Wang/David Isay collaborations. Just the right touch.
January 14, 2013
What is the Bowery? Read this.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews