Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became The World's Most Notorious Slum

by Tyler Anbinder

Overview

Nineteenth-century NYC’s most dynamic and dangerous neighborhood comes vividly to life in this “careful, intelligent, and sympathetic history” (The New York Times Book Review).

Located in today’s Chinatown, Five Points was home to poor immigrants and other marginalized communities. It witnessed more riots, scams, prostitution, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in America. But at the same time it was a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap theaters, dance halls, and boxing matches. It was also the home of meeting halls for the political clubs and the machine politicians who would come to dominate not just the city but an entire era in American politics.

Drawing from letters, diaries, newspapers, bank records, police reports, and archaeological digs, Anbinder has written the first-ever history of Five Points, the neighborhood that was a microcosm of the American immigrant experience. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America’s immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.

A New York Times Notable Book

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439137741
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	599
Sales rank:	33,493
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Tyler Anbinder is a professor of history at George Washington University. His first book, Nativism and Slavery, was also a New York Times Notable Book and the winner of the Avery Craven Prize of the Organization of American Historians. He lives in Arlington, VA.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	Prologue: The Five Points Race Riot of 1834	7
	The Making of Five Points	14
Chapter 2	Prologue: Nelly Holland Comes to Five Points	38
	Why They Came	42
Chapter 3	Prologue: "The Wickedest House on the Wickedest Street That Ever Existed"	67
	How They Lived	72
Chapter 4	Prologue: The Saga of Johnny Morrow, the Street Peddler	106
	How They Worked	111
Chapter 5	Prologue: "We Will Dirk Every Mother's Son of You!"	141
	Politics	145
Chapter 6	Prologue: "This Phenomenon, 'Juba'"	172
	Play	176
Chapter 7	Prologue: The Bare-Knuckle Prizefight Between Yankee Sullivan and Tom Hyer	201
	Vice and Crime	207
Chapter 8	Prologue: "I Shall Never Forget This as Long as I Live": Abraham Lincoln Visits Five Points	235
	Religion and Reform	241
Chapter 9	Prologue: "He Never Knew When He Was Beaten"	269
	Riot	274
Chapter 10	Prologue: "The Boy Who Commands That Pretty Lot Recruited Them for the Seceshes"	297
	The Civil War and the End of an Era	303
Chapter 11	Prologue: "So It Was Settled That I Should Go to America"	337
	The Remaking of a Slum	343
Chapter 12	Prologue: "These 'Slaves of the Harp'"	362
	Italians	367
Chapter 13	Prologue: "The Chinese Devil Man"	389
	Chinatown	396
Chapter 14	The End of Five Points	424
	Notes	443
	Select Bibliography	511
	Acknowledgments	517
	Index	521

Editorial Reviews

Anbinder...spares no gritty detail in this recreation of this immigrants' hell on earth known for its...crimes, its misery and its vices.

Washington Post Book World

" 'FIVE POINTS!... There is Murder in every syllable, and Want, Misery and Pestilence... crowd upon the imagination as the pen traces the words,' " bemoaned Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1873. That's a lot to live down to, even in New York. Long ignored by academics, Five Points an internationally notorious intersection in what is now lower Manhattan's Chinatown that was the site of crime and poverty for most of the 19th century is now a hot topic in history, sociology and even pop fiction (much of Caleb Carr's bestselling The Alienist was set there). Anbinder, associate professor of history at George Washington University, delivers the best of these studies. His splendid book draws upon wide-ranging sources census lists, the logs of charitable organizations, police records, real estate registers, personal documents, news stories, reformers' reports to create a breathtaking overview of the extraordinary poverty and squalor in which the area's German, Jewish, Italian and Irish residents lived. Replete with riveting incidents (the gang war between the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits) and details (a devastating survey of spousal abuse and murder cites specific cases), this history comes vividly alive with enormous depth and heart. Whether describing children's work (boys sold papers or blackened boots; girls swept streets and sold corn, and were always in demand as prostitutes the going rate for virgins was $10) or the significance of saints festivals for Italian immigrants, Anbinder proves himself a superb storyteller and historian. Illus. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In the 19th century, the Five Points district in lower Manhattan was New York City's most noxious slum, teeming with wretchedly poor Irish, German, Italian, and Chinese immigrants and African Americans who lived in densely packed rookeries sandwiched among dance halls, gambling joints, saloons, and brothels. Yet it was also humming with vibrant street life, popular theaters, and political clubhouses. Now largely forgotten, Five Points attracted many "slumming parties" and visiting celebrities such as Charles Dickens and even Abraham Lincoln. Anbinder (history, George Washington Univ.) has written a comprehensive narrative of this once blighted area. He argues that earlier accounts were superficial and biased, and he aims to set the record straight. To Anbinder, Five Points embodied the immigrant saga of enduring great hardship on the way to a better life. Recommended for public libraries with large urban history collections and academic libraries. Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A multidecade study of a few Manhattan blocks that have been seen as emblematic of the entire city. Five Points, so named after city authorities extended Anthony Street to join the X-shaped junction of Orange and Cross streets, lay in the heart of a mixed residential and commercial district that was always a bit rough-and-tumble, and as the city grew northward in the early 1800s, Five Points declined. In a Hogarthian painting of 1827, the artist George Catlin captured its already infamous reputation; and, as Anbinder (History/George Washington Univ.) writes, "Fights are breaking out everywhere; people are drunk; pigs roam the streets; whites and blacks are mixing; and prostitutes brazenly solicit customers." Little changed over the next 70 years except the cast of characters: Five Points emerged as a touchdown point for successive waves of immigrants from Ireland and Italy, central and eastern Europe, as well as for blacks moving north after the Civil War. These newcomers, Anbinder writes, remained for a time "locked into the lowest-paying occupations, such as laborer, tailor, shoemaker, or seamstress" but eventually moved on to make room for the next group of newcomers. Prostitution and other vices, particularly alcoholism and drug addiction, remained constants; so did corruption, as policemen and city officials pocketed money and accepted favors to look the other way. So seedy did Five Points become that many of the horrific examples of slum life in pioneering reformer Jacob Riis's reports came from its tenements. Eventually, after conditions reached their worst, even the hoodlums, hookers, drunks, and bohemians left, and the area-much of it razed to make room for ColumbusPark-formed the beginning of New York's Chinatown. Plodding and overdetailed at times, but overall a slice of Americana that captures much and offers welcome social history. (40 b&w photographs)

Kirkus Reviews