Episode 60 of the Bowery Boys, five points part two, back to the gutter.

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Hello and welcome to the Bowery Boys, my name is Tom Myers.

And I'm Greg Young and this is part two of our look at five points, the most notorious slum in Lower Manhattan in the 19th century.

If you missed last week's episode, you might want to listen to that one first or if you'd rather not know what's going on, keep playing.

Well, we're going to give a little recap of last week's episode and then we're going to jump right into the 1850s and play you the latter days of five points through reform, new immigrants and its eventual demolition.

So join us as we go back to five points.

Okay, Greg, before we just jump back into the mid 19th century, why don't you rewind just a bit and situate us in five points?

Well, to recap, the five points, this neighborhood in downtown Manhattan now in the sort of civic center Chinatown neighborhood is where it is.

It existed from the 1820s until the end of the 19th century and we'll tell you all about that end.

Five points was the intersection of various streets, Anthony's Street, which is now Worst Street, Orange Street, which is now Baxter, Cross Street, which then disappeared as well as little water street, which no longer exists.

One block up from this intersection was the street, Mulberry Street, which still has its same name today.

Five points spirited up on the land that once contained collect pond. I don't know how many times we can stress that.

If we're really showing off at this.

Which drained and was replaced with some buildings that then sunk into the soggy ground and then those buildings were replaced with cheaper tenements.

Obviously, then this is where really poor New Yorkers, but the primary group, of course, were the Irish who almost took over the whole place.

We briefly discussed the street scenes, a little bit of the makeup of what five points looked like at this time.

And basically got up to around 1850.

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