The Five Points
The Five Points Neighborhood of New York City
Photo Credit: Purchased from Shutterstock
FALSE FACE, FALSE HEART, my YA Historical fiction project, set in the Bowery Theatre in New York City during the tumultuous year of 1849 has sent me on a journey combing through the research.
Squalid inhumane living conditions, prostitution, gangs, and crime might describe many localities in the United States during any given time period. One of the most infamous neighborhoods in the mid-nineteenth century was the area of New York City where three streets intersected to form five corners or “points.” Built on the landfill of Collect Pond, the vicinity smelled of waste from nearby slaughterhouses, the streets were strewn with garbage, and wild pigs roamed freely.
Photo Credit: General Research Division, The New York Public Library. "Five Points, 1827" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1855. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/94032e2f-e505-4895-e040-e00a180623ae
The people who lived in the Five Points were primarily Irish—most of whom had fled their country due to the Potato Famine, but Italians, free African-Americans and Germans, also settled there. The mix of cultures often clashed but sometimes friendships developed between different ethnicities. It is believed that dance played a big part in neighborhood alliances. Irish dances were altered by African Americans and vice versa. The combination of competing dance styles became what we now know as tap dance.
It was common for members of the elite to visit the Five Points in an attempt to experience how the other half lived. Charles Dickens, who often showed compassion when depicting the poor and destitute had particularly harsh things to say about the neighborhood in his book, American Life. After touring the Five Points for he wrote,
“Rats should move out of the neighborhood in search of better lodgings… rotten staircases, windowless rooms, and heaps of rags were scared women sleeping…poverty, wretchedness, and vice are rife…this is the place: these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth…”
Photo Credit: Purchased from Shutterstock
Tenements and Storefronts in the Five Points Neighborhood
Photo Credit: Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Tenements & storefronts: L. Peirano Wines; pedestrians; Shults Bread wagon" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1895. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/4d1c78f0-b3c8-0132-d139-58d385a7bbd0
Paradise Square, a new musical set in the Five Points neighborhood, opened on Broadway in March 2022. Here’s the show’s synopsis from Playbill.com:
It’s 1863 and in a 20-block area of Manhattan known as the Five Points, Black and Irish Americans live side by side, work together, marry, and for a brief period realize racial harmony. However, the intensifying Civil War soon results in the first-ever Federal draft, leading to riots as Whites are called to enlist while Blacks are barred from serving. Will the hard-won bonds of friendship, community, and family in the Five Points prevail or be severed forever?
Here’s the link to the Paradise Square website.
Sources:
https://www.thoughtco.com/five-points-ny-notorious-neighborhood-1774064
https://longislandwins.com/columns/immigrants-civil-war/five-points-on-the-edge-of-the-draft-riots/
Cliff, Nigel. The Shakespeare Riots. New York: Random House, 2007.
