The Atlantic Garden was a beer garden and music hall established by William Kramer in 1858 at what is now 50 Bowery in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was next to the Bowery Theatre, on the site of the Bull's Head Tavern (formerly headquarters for New York's cattle market) and the New York Hotel.Manhattan Unlocked: "The tavern itself would, according to Kenneth Dunshee's As You Pass By, become 'the New York Hotel and still later was occupied by the Atlantic Garden.'" The premises extended west to a secondary frontage on Elizabeth Street.Manhattan Unlocked: In and Around the Bowery Theater' quoting New York Times article of 1910.
The Bowery Theatre was built as a fashionable theater, but by the 1850s it came to cater to immigrant groups; the Germans especially patronized Atlantic Garden, which featured a theater behind the beer hall, where the new entertainment of "variety" acts were presented along with popular music concerts.A performance chronology is included in Carl Eugene Marquardt, "The German drama on the New York Stage, 1840-1872" (University of Pennsylvania), noted in John Koegel, Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840-1940, p 498 note 17. In 1910, following the neighborhood's changing dynamic, Atlantic Garden switched to presenting Yiddish theatre.
In 2013, the Chu family razed structures on the site to make way for a high-rise hotel. Although there were rumors that the site might have contained remnants of the old Bull's Head Tavern, an archeological excavation did not find any such evidence.
References
External links 50 Bowery: Phase IB Archaeological Monitoring and Field Testing of the 50 Bowery site (Block 202, Lot 23), New York, New York