David Bowie's Apartment — 285 Lafayette Street, SoHo, New York

David Bowie lived at 285 Lafayette Street in the SoHo/NoHo neighbourhood of Manhattan for the last two decades of his life, from the mid-1990s until his death from liver cancer on January 10, 2016. He was 69 years old — his final album Blackstar had been released just two days earlier, on his birthday, and was later understood as a carefully planned farewell. The apartment on Lafayette Street allowed Bowie the anonymity he craved: he would walk the streets of downtown Manhattan, visit bookshops, take the subway, and eat at local restaurants largely unbothered by passersby.

Bowie had moved to New York in the 1990s after decades based variously in London, Berlin, and Switzerland. The Lafayette Street years were among his most personally content — he married the model Iman in 1992, their daughter Lexi was born in 2000, and he withdrew from touring after a heart attack in 2004 to focus on family life. His silence from 2003 to 2013 fuelled constant speculation, but when he returned with The Next Day (2013) and then Blackstar (2016), the quality of the work stunned even his most devoted admirers.

The building at 285 Lafayette Street is a private residential loft building in one of Manhattan's most desirable neighbourhoods. After Bowie's death, fans created a memorial mural on the wall at 285 Lafayette Street, and tributes were left outside the building for months. The proximity of the apartment to the downtown cultural life that Bowie loved — galleries, theatres, bookshops, jazz clubs — made it a fitting final home for an artist whose curiosity never diminished.