five points neighborhood

New York history rarely offers data about the lives of its less prominent citizens. The analysis of Five Points represents an opportunity to study the poor and working class. Although many written sources refer to the Five Points district as New York City's most notorious slum, those who wrote about the neighborhood saw it through ill-informed and biased eyes. For the most part they were middle and upper class reformers who disparaged the lifestyles of African Americans and European immigrants who resided in the neighborhood, but they could not have known what it was like to live in Five Points.

It is presently believed that much of the neighborhood consisted of the working poor. How they conducted their daily lives is not known.