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The Story of Five Points: Wicked Slum

You’ve heard the legend of New York’s most notorious neighborhood. Now come with us as we hit the streets of Five Points and dig up some of the nitty, gritty details of its birth, its first residents and its most scandalous pastimes.

One of the most famous images of Five Points, accentuating its bustle and chaos

A dour living condition in a Baxter Street tenement

People drank their woes away at one of Five Points’ hundreds of groceries, rum shops and grog houses

A typical scene down Bottle Alley

Newspapers kept images of Five Points’ squalor in the public eye for shock value

The rich would venture into Five Points on guided tours, observing its poverty and sordidness as though at a zoo

6 replies on “The Story of Five Points: Wicked Slum”

I just listened to the Podcast on Five Points Part I., and would like to thank you for including the quote from Charles Dickens. It painted a very clear picture of the times and location and I can appreciate his “superior” point of view. It made me laugh and think, “Oh, that Dickens”!
Patricia
Hollywood, FL.

I am currently reading “The Gangs of New York” and just watched the movie. Some of the characters are the same, but the events in the movie don’t coincide with certain characters in the book. The book contains a flood of specific events, names, dates, and locations that are a little difficult to keep track of everything (could be the writing style). You really learn what was going on in New York City during that time period.

I love looking at old original buildings and imagining what it was like back then. An interesting note and something verified by my father, a horticulturist, is a tree in the middle of Columbus park. It’s an Elm tree that is much larger than any other tree planted there, those smaller trees being planted when the park was originally built. It measures 5 feet in diameter and it’s approximate age is estimated between 200 and 240 years old. This means it stood as a sapling around the turn of the 19th century and predates 5 points. When Collect Pond’s location is overlaid on a modern map, this elm in all likeliness stood on the pond’s Eastern edge.

I love looking at old original buildings and imagining what it was like back then. An interesting note and something verified by my father, a horticulturist, is a tree in the middle of Columbus park. It’s an Elm tree that is much larger than any other tree planted there, those smaller trees being planted when the park was originally built. It measures 5 feet in diameter and it’s approximate age is estimated between 200 and 240 years old. This means it stood as a sapling around the turn of the 19th century and predates 5 points. When Collect Pond’s location is overlaid on a modern map, this elm in all likeliness stood on the pond’s Eastern edge.

At some point in 1990s, early-ish, a parking lot just south of Chinatown was dug up for the sake of putting in foundations for a new federal building. This excavation revealed a whole block of Five Points slum dwellings — their basements, anyway. It was an amazing find, and to think it was there all along, just below the surface. You could see lots of walls and hearths and brick chimneys, etc. If you visit the subsequent building, there is a small museum inside that exhibits some of the artifacts found by archaeologists there. Great stuff.

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