Part Two: Five Points

We made our way over to Columbus Park for a snack.
Here is an 1803 map of the neighborhood.


The Mulberry Bend section of Five Points is the bent block to the right of the pond labeled "Sixth Ward."  The pond was the Collect Pond, a fetid disgusting and ill-used fresh water resource that was quickly filled in and built upon.  Due to the miasma theory of disease, only the poor Irish and other foreigners settled in the area.

I showed the campers Jacob Riis' photos of the area while we had our snack.  Ugh!

Here is a map of our trip through the area.



We saw the oldest tenement, at 65 Mott Street, a 7-story structure built when only 2-story buildings were in the area.  And we saw the Bloody Angle, aka Doyers Street, where Chinese Tongs fought and killed each other in the early 1900s.  But we also imagined the Almack, or Pete William's Place, at the corner of Bayard and Baxter Streets, where we learned from Gregory Hines that tap was invented.   William Henry Lane, who specialized in the African Shuffle, had dance competitions with John Diamond, and Irishman who clogged.  They would trade off imitating each other's styles, and ended up fusing the new style Tap!