Editing Five Points, Manhattan (section)

==Slum==
[[File:Five Points New York City C.1879.gif|thumb|left|Rear pre-[[American Civil War|Civil War]] era tenements constructed of wood in [[Mulberry Bend]] in the Five Points neighborhood around 1872, Board of Health.|alt=]]

At the height of Five Points' inhabitation, only parts of [[East End of London|London's East End]] were equivalent in the western world for population density, [[child mortality|child and infant mortality]], disease, violent crime, unemployment, prostitution, and other classic problems of the urban destitute. It is sometimes considered the original American [[melting pot]], at first consisting primarily of newly emancipated Black Americans (gradual emancipation led to the end of outright enslavement in New York on July 4, 1827) and ethnic Irish, who had a small minority presence in the area since the 1600s.{{sfn|Anbinder|2001}} The local politics of "the Old Sixth ward" (The Points' primary municipal voting district), while not free of corruption, set important precedents for the election of Catholics to key political offices. Before that time, New York, and the United States at large, had been governed by the Anglo-Protestant founders.  Although there were many tensions between Black Americans and the Irish, their cohabitation in Five Points was the first large-scale instance of voluntary racial integration in American history.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://onlocationtours.com/locations/gangs-of-new-york/|title=Gangs of New York|work=On Location Tours|access-date=August 18, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140819103103/http://onlocationtours.com/locations/gangs-of-new-york/|archive-date=August 19, 2014|url-status=live}}</ref> Gradually, this African-American community moved to Manhattan's West Side and to undeveloped lands on the north end of the island in [[Harlem, Manhattan|Harlem]] by the early 20th century and across the [[Harlem River]] into the [[South Bronx]], as the city developed northward.<ref name="Gilfoyle1992">{{cite book|author=Timothy J. Gilfoyle|title=City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ccEP_1Lox-cC&pg=PA41|access-date=March 22, 2013|year=1992|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-393-31108-2|pages=41–}}</ref>

[[File:Mulberry Bend, New York.jpg|thumb|right|[[Mulberry Bend]] in the Five Points neighborhood (documented by [[Jacob Riis]], c. 1896) looking north from just above Cross Street. The tenements on the left were razed to create Mulberry Bend Park (now [[Columbus Park (Manhattan)|Columbus Park]]). The two tenements visible on the right, 46 [[Mulberry Street (Manhattan)|Mulberry Street]] ({{Circa|1886}}) in the foreground, and 48-50 Mulberry Street on the Bend, are still there.<ref>{{Google maps |url=https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7150214,-73.9996529,3a,75y,92.86h,97.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6PyeNzOkxocoSfHqHA5x-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 |title=46 Mulberry Street, October 2019 |access-date=May 17, 2020}}</ref>]]

Five Points is alleged to have had the highest murder rate of any slum at that time in the world. According to an old New York [[urban legend]], the [[Old Brewery]], formerly Coulthard's Brewery from the 1790s, then an overcrowded tenement on Cross Street housing 1,000 poor, is said to have had a murder a night for 15 years, until its demolition in 1852.<ref>{{cite news|last=Blumenthal|first=Ralph|title=The City's Rough Past: Frighteningly Familiar &#91;sic&#93;|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/26/weekinreview/the-region-the-city-s-rough-past-frighteningly-familar.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=August 26, 1990|access-date=August 22, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091002160655/http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/26/weekinreview/the-region-the-city-s-rough-past-frighteningly-familar.html|archive-date=October 2, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Walking Guide to New York">[https://books.google.com/books?id=BLJtOzQHjggC&dq=%22five+points%22+%22al+capone%22+%22never+left%22&pg=PA26 ''Walking Guide to New York''].</ref>

Italians first settled in the Five Points in the 1850s. The parish of the Church of the Transfiguration at 25 Mott Street was largely Italian by the 1880s.<ref>"Little Italy" in {{Cite enc-nyc2}}</ref> Mulberry Bend, named for the curve in Mulberry Street in the Chatham District, became the heart of [[Little Italy, Manhattan|Little Italy]], which at its most populated was bordered on the south by Worth Street, on the east by the Bowery, and on the west by West Broadway.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lkPh8uEO6rUC |title=Little Italy |author-first=Emelise |author-last=Aleandri |year=2002 |publisher=Arcadia |place=Charleston, South Carolina |page=10, caption |isbn=0-7385-1062-9}}</ref>

"Almack's" (also known as "Pete Williams's Place"), an African American-owned dance hall located at 67 Orange Street in Mulberry Bend (today Baxter Street), just south of its intersection with Bayard Street, was home to a fusion of Irish [[Reel (dance)|reels]] and [[jig]]s with the African [[shuffle (tap dance)|shuffle]].<ref>Asbury, Herbert.  [http://herbertasbury.com/gangsofnewyork/ ''Gangs of New York''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070416144337/http://herbertasbury.com/gangsofnewyork/ |date=April 16, 2007 }}.</ref><ref>[[Mark Kurlansky|Kurlansky, Mark]]. ''[[The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell]]''. p. 157.<!-- ISBN# needed --></ref> Though different ethnic groups interacted in other parts of the United States as well, creating new dance and music forms, in New York this music and dance had spontaneously resulted on the street from competition between African-American and Irish musicians and dancers. It spilled into Almack's, where it gave rise in the short term to [[tap dance]] (see [[Master Juba]]) and in the long term to a music hall genre that was a major precursor to [[jazz]] and [[rock and roll]]. This ground is now Columbus Park.