What is Five Points?
“Five Points” is the 19th-century neighborhood known as one of the most violent, dangerous and impoverished slums in the history of New York City. It was so famous that Charles Dickens visited the area and wrote about it in his American Notes published in 1842. Though it was a racially and ethnically mixed neighborhood in the beginning of the 18th century, by the 1850’s it was predominantly Irish. It was described by middle class reformers of the day as an area of unpaved streets and wooden shacks inhabited by what they characterized as thugs and prostitutes.
