"Gangs of New York" and Ghosts of the Five Points

While most of the physical world of the Five Points depicted in Martin Scorcese's "Gangs of New York" no longer exists (a remnant of one of the Points themselves does); echoes and traces of that world can still be found if you look closely enough.

On the site of the First Tombs prison, built over the center of the Collect Pond, today exists Collect Pond Park.  Because the springs themselves were never capped, much of the land in this area keeps subsiding and the basements and sub-basements of the court buildings which border the old pond are only kept dry through the use of sump pumps which run 24/7.

Also, you find an unusually high number of businesses in this part of present-day Chinatown which are partly or fully below grade.  This is because when the first generation of buildings (constructed soon after the area was platted in the 1830's) began to sink into the swampy land (remember, the springs were never properly capped) they were abandoned, pulled down and - on this foundation of rubble, at the second floor level - new structures were built in their stead.  This part of Chinatown is rent with passages where a person who knows their way can literally go down one flight of stairs on one street, traverse an underground passageway and literally emerge up another flight of stairs a block or two away.

Most of the Five Points survived into the early 20th century.  Most of the "Old Law" tenement houses that Jacob Riis wrote about were demolished in the second decade of the 1900's to make way for the court district which grew up around the site of the first Tombs.  What you can see now, from, say the 11th floor of the New York City Civil Courthouse overlooking Collect Pond Park, is the "park" itself (half the size that it ought to be, since parking for the Dept. of Health encroaches on its southern half) in the foreground, the Criminal Courthouse and latter-day Tombs complex on the left, the NYC Family Court building on the right and, in the upper-left hand corner of the photo, between the NYC and NYS Dept of Health buildings, is a patch of green that surrounds the octagonal New York State Supreme Court House at 60 entre Street.  This triangular piece of green overlaps with part of the site of Paradise Square.

What is now Columbus Park once was a terrible and notorious "uber block" called Mulberry Bend.  So large that it contained row upon row of the Old-Law tenements deep into it's recesses, it was rent by numerous alleys (Bandits Roost, Baxter Street Alley, Bottle Alley, Bone Alley, Thieves’ Alley, and Kerosene Row). 

Links:

From the U.S. government archaeological dig for the "new" federal courthouse erected in the FP in the 1990's 

Urbanography site run by Gregory Christiano, page on the Five Points:


"A Journey Thorough Chinatown: Collect Pond"


The Bowery Boys Podcast


The Mulberry Bend, a good blog (mostly) about this area in the latter part of the 19th century:


and a short documentary film, "Collect Pond" directed by Dan Kowalski in which I am featured, which traces how this once-arcadian 26 acre pond became first fouled and then filled in to become the Five Points and, ultimately, the courthouse district and Chinatown.