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Summary
Author Notes
Tyler Anbinder is an Associate Professor of History at George Washington University. His first book, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and the winner of the Avery Craven Prize of the Organization of American Historians. He lives in Arlington, Virginia
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A multidecade study of a few Manhattan blocks that have been seen as emblematic of the entire city. Five Points, so named after city authorities extended Anthony Street to join the X-shaped junction of Orange and Cross streets, lay in the heart of a mixed residential and commercial district that was always a bit rough-and-tumble, and as the city grew northward in the early 1800s, Five Points declined. In a Hogarthian painting of 1827, the artist George Catlin captured its already infamous reputation; and, as Anbinder (History/George Washington Univ.) writes, "Fights are breaking out everywhere; people are drunk; pigs roam the streets; whites and blacks are mixing; and prostitutes brazenly solicit customers." Little changed over the next 70 years except the cast of characters: Five Points emerged as a touchdown point for successive waves of immigrants from Ireland and Italy, central and eastern Europe, as well as for blacks moving north after the Civil War. These newcomers, Anbinder writes, remained for a time "locked into the lowest-paying occupations, such as laborer, tailor, shoemaker, or seamstress" but eventually moved on to make room for the next group of newcomers. Prostitution and other vices, particularly alcoholism and drug addiction, remained constants; so did corruption, as policemen and city officials pocketed money and accepted favors to look the other way. So seedy did Five Points become that many of the horrific examples of slum life in pioneering reformer Jacob Riis's reports came from its tenements. Eventually, after conditions reached their worst, even the hoodlums, hookers, drunks, and bohemians left, and the area-much of it razed to make room for Columbus Park-formed the beginning of New York's Chinatown. Plodding and overdetailed at times, but overall a slice of Americana that captures much and offers welcome social history. (40 b&w photographs)
Booklist Review
A haven for hellions and harlots during the 1800s, New York's Five Points area, now the heart of Chinatown, had a notorious reputation. In researching the history of this microcosm, Anbinder faced a paradox: there is an abundance of journalistic material about Five Points, much of it sensationalistic, and a paucity of primary records about the lives of the neighborhood's almost wholly immigrant population--first Irish, then Italians and Chinese. But his in-depth research has resulted in a narrative that never stagnates, in part due to Anbinder's prefixing of each chapter with a story of an individual's experience in the milieu of depravity, crime, and opportunity that characterized Five Points. One way up from the streets was politics, a pugilistic variety from which issued many riots, rigged elections, and colorfully corrupt characters whom Anbinder profiles. A marvelously tactile work that radiates how this legendary immigrant neighborhood pulsed with schemes, dreams, and despair. Gilbert Taylor
Choice Review
Throughout the 19th century, the Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan symbolized the horrific human costs of industrialization and urbanization. Anbinder (George Washington Univ.) vividly portrays life in this slum by pairing chapters that tell the stories of individual residents with those that speak more broadly to the neighborhood's origins, inhabitants, occupational profile, recreation, politics, and interactions with the law and reformers. While noting the area's exciting nightlife that brought streams of visitors "slumming," Anbinder also recalls the persistent alcoholism, child and spousal abuse, and filthy, dark tenements. Based on painstaking original research linking residents mentioned in newspapers, police files, bank records, census returns, and numerous other sources and informed by decades of work by others in immigration and social history, this book is a marvelous introduction to the urban experience of this era. Social scientists may regret the absence of an explicit theoretical framework, sacrificed to reach a broader audience of a general educated public. Highly recommended for public and university libraries. P. F. Field Ohio University
Library Journal Review
In the 19th century, the Five Points district in lower Manhattan was New York City's most noxious slum, teeming with wretchedly poor Irish, German, Italian, and Chinese immigrants and African Americans who lived in densely packed rookeries sandwiched among dance halls, gambling joints, saloons, and brothels. Yet it was also humming with vibrant street life, popular theaters, and political clubhouses. Now largely forgotten, Five Points attracted many "slumming parties" and visiting celebrities such as Charles Dickens and even Abraham Lincoln. Anbinder (history, George Washington Univ.) has written a comprehensive narrative of this once blighted area. He argues that earlier accounts were superficial and biased, and he aims to set the record straight. To Anbinder, Five Points embodied the immigrant saga of enduring great hardship on the way to a better life. Recommended for public libraries with large urban history collections and academic libraries. Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. 1 |
Chapter 1 Prologue: The Five Points Race Riot of 1834 | p. 7 |
The Making of Five Points | p. 14 |
Chapter 2 Prologue: Nelly Holland Comes to Five Points | p. 38 |
Why They Came | p. 42 |
Chapter 3 Prologue: "The Wickedest House on the Wickedest Street That Ever Existed" | p. 67 |
How They Lived | p. 72 |
Chapter 4 Prologue: The Saga of Johnny Morrow, the Street Peddler | p. 106 |
How They Worked | p. 111 |
Chapter 5 Prologue: "We Will Dirk Every Mother's Son of You!" | p. 141 |
Politics | p. 145 |
Chapter 6 Prologue: "This Phenomenon, 'Juba'" | p. 172 |
Play | p. 176 |
Chapter 7 Prologue: The Bare-Knuckle Prizefight Between Yankee Sullivan and Tom Hyer | p. 201 |
Vice and Crime | p. 207 |
Chapter 8 Prologue: "I Shall Never Forget This as Long as I Live": Abraham Lincoln Visits Five Points | p. 235 |
Religion and Reform | p. 241 |
Chapter 9 Prologue: "He Never Knew When He Was Beaten" | p. 269 |
Riot | p. 274 |
Chapter 10 Prologue: "The Boy Who Commands That Pretty Lot Recruited Them for the Seceshes" | p. 297 |
The Civil War and the End of an Era | p. 303 |
Chapter 11 Prologue: "So It Was Settled That I Should Go to America" | p. 337 |
The Remaking of a Slum | p. 343 |
Chapter 12 Prologue: "These 'Slaves of the Harp'" | p. 362 |
Italians | p. 367 |
Chapter 13 Prologue: "The Chinese Devil Man" | p. 389 |
Chinatown | p. 396 |
Chapter 14 The End of Five Points | p. 424 |
Notes | p. 443 |
Select Bibliography | p. 511 |
Acknowledgments | p. 517 |
Index | p. 521 |