Chatham Square ca 1875
Chatham Square incorporated the Five-Points district made so popular in fiction and film. In 1883 things weren’t quite so bad as they once were, but poverty and crime still held the upper hand.
From Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s City of Eros:
Along its western edge, the Bowery and Chatham Square were a bourse of sex. The patrician George Templeton Strong claimed that after nightfall, amid the theaters, saloons, dance halls, and cheap lodging houses, the thoroughfare overflowed with ‘members of the whorearchy in most slatternly deshabille.’
Once elegant eighteenth-century residences like that of the merchant Edward Mooney at 18 Bowery now served as brothels.”
The Black Horse Tavern at Mulberry and Park.
The primary characteristics of the area in the last half of the 19th century were poverty, horrific living conditions, disease and crime.
From Wikipedia:
The Black Horse Tavern on Mulberry Street and corner of Park Street (now Mosco Street) in the Five Points neighborhood across the Street from Mulberry Bend. The picture to the right was taken sometime between 1895-1899. Building was razed and replaced with an apartment building in 1899.
Chatham Square Elevated Curve
See also
[[Prostitution]] [[McGlory’s Armory Hall]]
