Community History, Neighborhoods & Cultural Legacy
The intersection of five narrow streets in Lower Manhattan—Baxter, Worth, and Park—gave birth to the legendary and notorious Five Points neighborhood. During the 1840s and 1850s, Five Points was the most densely populated, squalid, and energetic immigrant district in North America.
Arriving at the Castle Garden immigrant depot in the Battery, penniless Irish families found their first shelter in the teeming tenements of the Sixth Ward. Despite brutal poverty and cholera epidemics, Irish immigrants established deep cultural solidarity. From the dance halls of the Five Points, the fusion of Irish step dancing with African-American rhythmic shuffle gave birth to modern American tap dance.
Politically, the Irish of Manhattan transformed Tammany Hall into an engine of immigrant political empowerment, providing jobs, food, and social safety nets in exchange for political loyalty, eventually leading to the election of Irish-American mayors and governors.