Gangs of New York and Five Points

I%26#39;ve been reasinf Ange%26#39;s thread about movies in which the Gangs of New York got a mention and how historically inaccurate it was.

My question is, whre abouts in New York was Five Points and does it still exist today? Obviously I don%26#39;t expect to turn up there and find a big gang fight going on !!!!

Gangs of New York and Five Points

i read the book some time ago..let%26#39;s see,in the early 1800%26#39;s ,near what%26#39;s now somewhat near Pearl,and Broadway,I think,there was a slum area ,filled with immigrants(Irish,Italian,free Blacks..)called Collect Pond,which had ditches from Canal St.to the Hudson..there was terrible poverty,disease %26amp; crime going hand-in-hand..

before 1825,the 5 points being formed by the intersecting of Mulberry,Cross(which I think is Park St.),Anthony(Worth St.?),Orange(Baxter St?)and Little Water St. (which I don%26#39;t think exists anymore)

Foul water seeped throughout the miserable dwellings,it was very marshy.

there were gangs of marauders,trying to survive ,made up of all the different ethnic groups;prostitution,and drunkeness..abandoned children..

Pres. Lincoln gave an antislavery speech there in 1860,and was distressed to see how the people lived..

politics played a role in how $$ was to be spent;there was great corruption...so,it depended on who was in power,which areas of the city would get improved,etc..

i am not sure how Chatham,and the Bowery fit in ,but those streets were also mentioned..it%26#39;s a good book!

Gangs of New York and Five Points

Collect Pond is now Collect Pond Park, a small, ugly, sad concrete sitting plaza, with benches. Most of the sidewalks around it are used by police cars for parking, last I walked by in the summer.

Basically, if you go to City Hall and walk northeast through the government buildlings into Chinatown, you%26#39;ll be in the right area.

From Pete Hammill, renowned NYC writer/journalist:

';Some basic geography: the Five Points district was named around 1830 after the intersection of three streets in the area above City Hall: Orange (now Baxter), Cross (now Park), Anthony (now Worth). (Ed. Note: The best map is in Tyler Anbinder’s “Five Points”). The intersection quickly gave its name to the entire area from Pearl St. to Canal, from Centre St. to the Bowery. Much of Chinatown stands today in the surviving streets; other parts are buried under the court houses and government buildings of Foley Sq.';

I hope GWB jumps in with more specifics!

OK, my understanding is that the above directions are correct.

If you want to see the original area, take the 4/5/6 train to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall Station.

Walk north along Centre Street, and then take a right (East) on Worth Street.

Once you see Baxter Street, you%26#39;re at one of the ';Five Points';.

N.B. Mosco Street had a couple of great stores...just east of Mosco and Mulberry is a fantastic Vietnamese food store, and just beyond that is a dumpling place, where you can buy fresh or frozen dumplings for almost nothing. The dumplings are fantastic.

Enjoy!

Thank you for your replies. I walked around that area when I was over in 2005 but just never realised that the Five Points was in that area.

Does anyone still refer to that area as Five Points or is it now a term consigned to the history books?

The movie was dreadful rubbish, and mangled the history badly. Some of the details of the film were patently absurd -- such as the subterranean tunnels. The area was a slum because it was built on a marsh; subterranean tunnels there made as much sense as subterranean tunnels in Venice.

That being said, the geography in modern terms is as follows:

The actual Five Points intersection (a name rememberd, but not used any more) is the intersection of Worth and Baxter Streets, at the soutwest corner of Columbus Park. The far sice of Columbus Park is ';Mulberry Bend';, the infamous stretch of Mulberry street where it curved. ';Paradis Square'; does not exist at all anymore, but its location would be on the south side of Worth, and to the west of the intersection with Baxter. ';Park Street';, which was ';Cross Street';, is no longer called ';Park';. Its present name is ';Mosco';, and it no longer reaches the Five Points intersection. If you stand at teh Five Points and look across the playground in Columbus Park, you will see a narrow street that descends steeply from Mott Street next to the wall of Transfiguration Church. That street is Mosco, formerly Park and Cross, and if you use your mind%26#39;s eye to continue it to Worth and Baxter, you will haveanother one of the ';points'; and the southern side of Paradise Square.

The new US Courthouse covers part of teh site, and some urban arcaeology was done when it was built -- you can find lots of interesting info here:

http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm

The Collect Pond covered all of what is now Foley Square, the Five Points, and teh area immediately west of Foley Square to about Broadway. Even thugh the Pond was filled in and the surface built up about 12 feet or so, if you know what you are looking at, you can still see traces of the topography. Mosco Street, mentioned above, still shows a sharp descent, as does Elk Street behind City Hall as it descends from Chambers. Since both City Hall and Transfiguration Church date from the first decade of the 19th C., they sit at the original ground level -- the descent down a hill to the pond then becomes understandable.

Just last week, out of curiosity I asked some court officers from 60 Centre Street if their basement leaks because of the springs of the Collect Pond. Apparently, up until a few years ago when more modern waterproofing was done, leaky basement walls were indeed a problem there!

Incidentally, the Catholic church threatened by Nativist mobs in the 1840%26#39;s (NOT the 1860%26#39;s!) was not in the 5 Points at all. It was the Old Cathedral up on Mulberry at Prince, and it was saved because Bishop ';Dagger John'; Hughes called out the Ancient Order of Hibernians (and not Leonardo DiCaprio...), who positioned some cannon on the front steps. This appeal to reason proved persuasive; unlike in Philadelphia, which had a less aggressive bishop, no Catholic churches were burned in NYC. It is because of the troubles of 150 years ago, though, that the churchyard at Old St. Patrick%26#39;s has that curiously high, stout brick wall all the way around.

Boss Tweed (whose grave can be seen in Greenwood Cemetery in the Bronx, and whose pocket-lining Courthouse was splendidly restored about 7 years ago) was in fact the head of Engine Company #6 back when the Fire Department was a collection of volunteer companies. The riots in which these street-gang-with-a-firefighting-hobby fire companies participated during the Civil War led to their reorganization as the Fire Department of New York (and thus FDNY). Most of the companies survived the transformation, and Big Six still exists. Stop by the house on Beekman Street near Gold, and you can get a t-shirt that still bears their traditional tiger -- the same tiger that, because of Tweed%26#39;s association with the fire company, gave Nast his cartoon emblem for Tammany Hall.

And a note to all about the above -- I certainly CAN spell better than that; I simply am a lousy typist and I don%26#39;t proofread -- ah, well...

GWB do not worry about the spelling errors, you are excused after receiving such a wonderful history lesson.

Bravo!!!!

GBW, WBG, no no no, I meen GWB, all of the above stuck in my craw about the movie as well, but the finale of the film got me particularly and I wonder what you think. I have no knowledge of the ability of cannons fired from ships in the East River at the time, but when the Army fires in on the big fight, do you think it would have even been possible for the balls to reach the 5 Points (were any of this true, of course)?

There was certainly no artillery fire of any kind during the Draft Riots -- but had there been naval gunboats in the East River or the Hudson, I think they would have been able to reach Five Points with their guns. Of course, this is entirely hypothetical -- much like the great SNL episode with ';historians'; and ';military tacticians'; considering the question ';what if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?'; (the conclusion of that ';discussion'; was that a middle aged lady would not have a large ordnance payload, but it would have been good for troop morale...) As it was, the Draft Riots are badly misrepresented in that movie regarding their causes and their course.

And did anyone notice that the graves shown at the end of the movie seem to be on a hill that floats in midair (rather like Swift%26#39;s Island of Laputa) somewhere over the East River near the Brooklyn Navy Yard?