Random Things About Real Five Points, Neighborhood That Inspired 'Gangs of New York' (11 items)

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  (#4) Irish Immigrants Poured Into The Tiny Neighborhood During The Potato Famine

  The Irish Potato Famine devastated the people of Ireland, sending thousands overseas in search of a better home. Many Irish ended up in the tenements of Five Points with no money to pursue nicer lodgings or improve their surroundings. These desperate immigrants were perceived as lowborn lawbreakers by many middle- and upper-class locals, fomenting long-running tensions between the groups. Much of the bad press and aggression in Five Points grew from this hostility.
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  (#9) Charles Dickens Called Five Points 'A World Of Vice And Misery'

  Famed British author Charles Dickens paid a visit to Five Points in 1842 as research for his book American Notes. He was shocked, saddened, and fearful, asking two police officers to accompany him into houses and a saloon. Dickens described the neighborhood in great detail:

  Poverty, wretchedness, and vice, are rife enough where we are going now. This is the place: these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth.
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  (#11) Five Points Is Known As America's 'Most Notorious Slum'

  The conditions in Five Points were horrific. Apart from the poor repair of the tenement houses and outbreaks of disease, many Five Points residents were alcohol abusers. One female resident once told a public health official, "If you lived in this place you would ask for whiskey instead of milk."

  In his book Five Points, historian Tyler Anbinder referred to it as "the first slum in America."
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  (#3) Police Records Show There Were Brothels On Every Block

  Five Points residents had no shortage of gambling dens and saloons to pick from, but more than anything else, they had brothels.

  "Every house was a brothel, and every brothel a hell," missionary Lewis Pease once wrote of Five Points. Police records from the time show that the blocks in and around the Five Points intersection featured a brothel in nearly every building.
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  (#6) The Neighborhood Started Out As A Pond That Slaughterhouses Would Dump Into

  In the 1700s, Manhattan featured a five-acre lake called the Collect. It was initially a popular gathering place during summer and winter alike, but gradually, slaughterhouses and tanneries set up along the banks. They began dumping bodily fluids, offal, and chemical byproducts into the lake, which was the Collect's unofficial beginning as a trash dump.

  By 1813, the lake had been filled in, and buildings gradually popped up in its place. When Five Points was enduring its lowest point in the 1840s and '50s, the stench was still so bad visitors would use camphor-soaked handkerchiefs to block out the rotten smells.
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  (#8) Tap Dancing May Have Come Out Of Five Points

  Five Points was largely an Irish neighborhood, but other groups, like Italians and African Americans, also lived there. Living in such close quarters led to a cross-cultural exchange that may have even resulted in the creation of tap dancing. Historians believe Black dancers adapted the Irish jig and clog to create the new dance style

  William Henry Lane was one such dancer; he rose to fame in Five Points in 1844. He was billed as "Master Juba" and "King of All Dancers" on stage and is considered by some to be the first tap dancer.

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