Editing Five Points, Manhattan (section)

==Social reform and renewal==
[[File:Bandits Roost, 59 and a half Mulberry Street.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Bandit's Roost, located in the notorious [[Mulberry Bend]] 57 years after merchants proposed their 1831 "Petition to Have the Five Points Opened". Picture by [[Jacob Riis]], 1888.]]

Various efforts by different charitable organizations and individuals, most of them Christian, attempted to alleviate the suffering of the poor in Five Points. Padre [[Felix Varela]], a [[Cuban people|Cuban]]-born priest, established a Roman Catholic parish at the former Episcopalian Christ Church on Ann Street in 1827, to minister to the poor Irish Catholics. In 1836, Father Varela's parish was divided into two parishes, with one on James Street dedicated to St. James, and second one housed in a former Presbyterian church on Chambers Street, which was renamed the [[Church of the Transfiguration, Roman Catholic (Manhattan)|Church of the Transfiguration]].  In 1853, the parish relocated to the corner of Mott and Cross streets, when they purchased the building of the Zion Protestant Episcopal Church (c.1801) from its congregation, which moved uptown.

The first call for clearing the slums of Five Points through wholesale demolition came in 1829 from merchants who maintained businesses in close proximity to the neighborhood. [[Slum clearance in the United States|Slum clearance]] efforts (promoted in particular by [[Jacob Riis]], author of ''[[How the Other Half Lives]]'', published 1890), succeeded in razing part of [[Mulberry Bend]] off Mulberry Street, one of the worst sections of the Five Points neighborhood. It was redeveloped as a park designed by noted landscape architect [[Calvert Vaux]] and named Mulberry Bend Park at its opening in 1897; it is now known as [[Columbus Park (Manhattan)|Columbus Park]].<ref>[http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M015 "Columbus Park"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111016142547/http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M015/ |date=October 16, 2011 }}. [[New York City Department of Parks and Recreation]].</ref>

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|quote  = That the place known as "Five points" has long been notorious... as being the nursery where every species of vice is conceived and matured; that it is infested by a class of the most abandoned and desperate character.... [They] are abridged from enjoying themselves in their sports, from the apprehension... that they may be enticed from the path of rectitude, by being familiarized with vice; and thus advancing step by step, be at last swallowed up in this sink of pollution, this vortex of irremediable infamy.... In conclusion your Committee remark, that this hot-bed of infamy, this modern [[Sodom and Gomorrah|Sodom]], is situated in the very heart of your City, and near the centre of business and of respectable population.... Remove this nucleus—scatter its present population over a larger surface—throw open this part of your city to the enterprise of active and respectable men, and you will have effected much for which good men will be grateful.<ref group=note>{{Cite web |url=http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/dbq/11003.html#B |title=Petition to Have the Five Points Opened | author=Board of Assistant Aldermen |date=October 24, 1831 |publisher=City of New York |website=Columbia University History Online |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928231235/http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/dbq/11003.html#B |archive-date=September 28, 2011 |access-date=May 24, 2020}} "Merchants owning property along the periphery of Five Points petitioned the municipal government in 1829 to demolish the heart of the slum by widening and extending Anthony and Cross Streets."</ref>}}

A major effort was made to clear the Old Brewery on Cross Street, described as "a vast dark cave, a black hole into which every urban nightmare and unspeakable fear could be projected."{{sfnp|Anbinder|2001|pages=67–70}} The Old Brewery had formerly been Coulthard's Brewery, which was located on the outskirts of the town less than thirty years earlier in the 1790s. Later enveloped by the growing city, it was located on Cross Street just south of the Five Points intersection. The brewery became known as the "Old Brewery" after being converted to a tenement / boarding house in 1837. Its lower, high-ceilinged floor and the above two floors were converted into four floors of rundown apartments. The rent was cheap and attracted many low-income tenants, many of them immigrants. The only census record taken in 1850 reported 221 people living in 35 apartments, averaging 6.3 persons per apartment.{{sfnp|Anbinder|2001|pages=67–70}} Accounts conflict as to the total number of people living in the Brewery flats, but all agreed that it was well over capacity.

The poverty seen throughout the Five Points was also displayed at the Old Brewery, and the women of the Home Mission took action. This [[Methodist]] charity group was determined to clean up Five Points. The ''[[Christian Advocate]]'', also called ''The Christian Advocate and Journal'', a weekly New York newspaper published by the [[Methodist Episcopal Church]], reported on the ongoing project in October 1853:

<blockquote>In a meeting held in [[w:Winter Garden Theatre (1850)|Metropolitan Hall]], in December 1851, such convincing proof was given of the public interest in this project, that the resolution was passed by the Executive Committee to purchase the Old Brewery. Other appeals were made to the public, and nobly met. That celebrated haunt was purchased, in a few months utterly demolished, and already a noble missionary building occupies its site.<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Five Points Mission|journal=Christian Advocate and Journal (1833–1865)|volume=28|issue=41|page=162|date=October 13, 1853|id={{ProQuest|126002159}}}}</ref></blockquote>

The New Mission House replaced the Old Brewery, under the direction of the Five Points Mission. It provided housing, clothes, food, and education as part of the charitable endeavor. The new building had 58 rooms available for living space, twenty-three more than the Old Brewery.