Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the Worlds Most Notorious Slum (Hardcover)

by Tyler Anbinder (Author) "ON HIS WAY into the Laight Street Presbyterian Church on June 12, 1834, silk importer Lewis Tappan noticed a lone black man standing nervously outside..." (more)
Key Phrases: fifth election district, fourth election district, third election district, New York, Five Pointers, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Though long ago bulldozed away and remade, the rough-and-tumble lower Manhattan district called Five Points was once considered to be so representative of New York that foreign journalists traveled there to gather horrifying stories for their readers. Wrote a Swedish reporter, "lower than to the Five Points it is not possible for human nature to sink."

In his wide-ranging reconstruction of Five Points's few square blocks, historian Tyler Anbinder shows that that journalist was not far off the mark. "Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of its residents lived in windowless, teeming apartments that were unfit for habitation," he writes. Alcoholism, violence, and prostitution were commonplace. Poverty was epidemic, and living conditions were so intolerable that the reforming sociologist Jacob Riis used the area as a case study for the wretched excesses of urban life. A corrupt city government kept the police at bay, making the neighborhood safe for a succession of crime lords but woefully dangerous for residents--most of whom, in time, would be newcomers from Ireland, Italy, Russia, and other faraway lands, as well as African Americans newly arrived from the South. "Locked into the lowest-paying occupations," as Anbinder writes, they labored, saved, and eventually moved on, making room for the next wave of immigrants.

Five Points is gone, though a few of its streets remain, marking the edge of Chinatown. Anbinder's careful study brings it back to life. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
H" `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 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (September 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684859955
• ISBN-13: 978-0684859958
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #468,056 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tough But Rewarding Read, August 6, 2002

By	Erik J. Fortmeyer "beerisjoy" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First off, I must point out that I work about eight blocks away from the infamous Five Points intersection in New York City. Also, I am very familiar with American history. With these two points mentioned, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed and learned alot from this book. If you are considering reading "Five Points", it is very important that you assess beforehand what you hope to get out of this book. It has the potential to be either VERY rewarding and informative to you OR, to bore the life out of you and make you want to fling it in the trash! This book is certainly NOT for the casual reader. It is remarkably detailed and meticulous in research chock full of 66 pages of footnotes and a small font, select bibliography of five pages. I had the great advantage of being able to walk over on my lunch hour and follow the included maps around the neighborhood to see where these locations were and, in some cases, see the still standing buildings mentioned in the text. If you are not from New York City or familiar with it's history, this book can be painfully tedious. If this book was a college course, I would estimate it to be either of the 300 or 400 level.

Some may take issue with the way the material is arranged. Trying to write about a whole neighborhood with so many layers of diverse history is no easy task. I personally enjoyed the format once I got used to it. Anbinder starts each chapter with a prologue vignette of a few pages describing an event or person who well exemplifies the topic following in the main chapter. I found myself going back at the end of each chapter and re-reading the prologue with the new information just gleaned in mind. The chapters cover the historical making of the Five Points neighborhood, why the neighborhood inhabitants originally (mostly the Irish before the Civil War) came there, how and where the residents lived there, how they worked and what they did, the politics the neighborhood was involved in over the years, the diversions and entertainment found in the neighborhood, types of vice and crime seen there, religion and reform issues (including extensive accounts of the activities of the Five Points Mission and the House of Industry), the infamous riots the neighborhood was a part or cause of (mostly in the 1850s), the neighborhood changes underway during the Civil War and the rise of Tammany Hall, the remaking of Five Points after the Civil War as Italians became more prevalent, the life and activities of the Italian majority in the 1870s and 1880s, the influx of Chinese to the neighborhood and the making of Chinatown, and the activities of Jacob Riis and other reformers towards the eventual demolition of much of Five Points in the 1890s. The author fills in some background information on discussed topics, but it helps greatly to be already familiar with the era's history. Examples would be needing to know the basics of Andrew Jackson and his "Democrats" before fully understanding the causes and issues relating to the rioting so common in Five Points before the Civil War or, familiarity with what Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall was. Some may also quarrel with the need for extensive statistics about the nationality makeup of individual Five Points tenements or the amount of money in residents bank accounts over the years, but extreme details such as those give insights to how New York City has become what it is today. Causes of the rise of the modern fire and police departments, some unions, gangs, and building code details are just some of the contemporary NYC realities that can trace a significant portion of their origins to Five Points.

With the previously mentioned warnings in mind, I highly recommend "Five Points" to the ravenous history student. This is no beach read or intro to Five Points. It is thick and heavy like cheesecake, but make sure you know that you love cheesecake before trying this supreme example!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Thought-Provoking Accounts, October 24, 2001

By	L. Sabin (Hudson Valley NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you have read "Low-Life" by Luc Sante, "Gangs of New York" by Herbert Asbury, or "New York by Gaslight" by George Foster, and enjoyed them even slightly, this book will not disappoint you. I thought the organization of the book into different aspects of life in the Five Points, instead of chronologically, was fine. It didn't confuse and seemed a logical way to organize a socially-focused history book. The author has a gift for writing some very detailed accounts and brings to life all the vibrancy and yes, squalor, held in the Five Points.

This book is guaranteed to please if you are lover of NYC history.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Revelation!, October 2, 2001

By	Emma Peterson (Lower East Side, Manhattan) - See all my reviews

I thought I knew everything about lower Manhattan, but this book gave me a whole new perspective on the city. Chock full of well-documented accounts as any real history book should be, I found myself recounting the wild stories from its pages to my coworkers. They were equally amazed (and in some cases, appalled), at what went on here in the 19th century.

This is a must-read book on New York. Its meticulous details enable us to virtually see, hear and smell the Five Points neighborhood. Unlike the novels set in the same neighborhood and cited by other reviewers, I found the true stories in Five Points far more fascinating than the fiction in the novels. And knowing it was written by an historian freed me from having continually to ask myself, "Did that really happen or is the novelist making it up?"

These true stories are better (and crazier) than any fiction.