Bull's Head Tavern

William P. Chappel

1870s · Oil on slate paper · The American Wing

By the early 1800s, Henry Astor’s Bull’s Head Tavern on Bowery stood at the epicenter of the city’s booming livestock district. There, slaughterhouses, stockyards, butcher shops, and tanyards processed cattle from across the tri-state region. The choicest stock would be paraded through the streets (sometimes with music) by butchers who took orders from residents. In the mid-1820s, hoping to rid Bowery Village of its noise and filth, a group of wealthy New Yorkers bought out Astor, who then led the relocation of the meat-processing trade by opening a new Bull’s Head in a more rural location at Twenty-Fourth Street and Third Avenue.

Artist

William P. Chappel

Date

1870s

Medium

Oil on slate paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps, and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954