REVIEW: http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm

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Rebecca Yamin, Ph.D., project director, Five Points Archaeological

Project Web-Site. <http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm>. Note that this

is a different address than one circulated on H-Net this past summer

Reviewed for H-Urban by Tyler Anbinder, Associate Professor, History

Department, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052,

anbinder@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

A response from Rebecca Yamin, John Milner Associates and Paul

Reckner, SUNY Binghamton < phila@johnmilnerassociates.com> follows

the review.

New York's Five Points, the most infamous slum in nineteenth-century

America, has been described by historian Daniel Czitrom as "very likely

the most thoroughly chronicled neighborhood in the United States."

Located just a few blocks north and east of City Hall, at what is now the

southern edge of Chinatown, the Five Points took its name from the

five corners formed by the intersection of three streets: Orange (now

Baxter), Cross (later Park and now Mosco), and Anthony (now Worth, which

originally terminated at this intersection and thus made five rather than

six corners). Beginning with Charles Dickens in the early 1840s,

virtually every writer visiting New York ventured into the Five Points to

chronicle its mysteries and miseries. Authors as diverse as Lydia Maria

Child, Nathaniel P. Willis, Richard Henry Dana, Fredrika Bremer, and Ned

Buntline wrote vivid descriptions of the area. Dozens of lesser-known

writers, as well as countless anonymous newspaper reporters, also penned

lurid sketches of its most notorious haunts, including the Old Brewery

tenement, Cow Bay, and Pete Williams' dance hall.

These writers often used the Five Points to prove the superiority

of their own societies. Dickens, for example, clearly hoped to show in

his _American Notes_ that the United States was producing poverty far

worse than that in England. In order to demonstrate the advantages of the

Southern labor system, Kentuckian William A. Caruthers boasted that Five

Pointers were "far more filthy, degraded, and wretched than any slave I

have ever beheld, under the most cruel and tyrannical master." Protestant

missionaries likewise used eye-witness accounts of Five Points vice and

drunkenness in their efforts to convince the world of the superiority of

Protestant enlightenment and restraint to Catholic "ignorance and

superstition."

Despite the abundance of contemporary descriptions of the Five

Points, scholars have written relatively little about this famous

neighborhood. With the exception of Carol Groneman's nearly thirty

year-old Ph.D. dissertation ("The 'Bloody Ould Sixth:' A Social

Analysis of a New York City Working Class Community in the Mid-Nineteenth

Century," Ph.D. diss., U. of Rochester, 1973), virtually nothing

significant has been written about this community whose very mention once

filled New Yorkers with dread. Groneman's dissertation, while very well

done, is primarily an analysis of the 1855 New York State census for the

area, and as such only whets one's appetite for a fuller understanding of

this place described by an 1853 magazine as the "synonym for ignorance the

most entire, for misery the most abject, for crime of the darkest dye, for

degradation so deep that human nature cannot sink below it." The

Five Points is mentioned in the work of other historians, most

notably Tim Gilfoyle, Richard Stott, Edward K. Spann, and Carroll

Smith-Rosenberg, but not in enough detail to give a modern reader a full

understanding of its many nuances. Recently, however, the Five Points

has played a prominent role in non-academic works such

as Luc Sante's _Low Life_ and especially Caleb Carr's _The Alienist_,

which has increased public interest in the famous slum.

Perhaps one of the reasons scholars have been reluctant to write

the history of the Five Points is that they apparently had little to work

with other than the bigotry-laden accounts of Protestant missionaries

and sensation-seeking newspaper reporters. The census, as Groneman

demonstrated, could be used to refute the neighborhood stereotypes in

certain areas, but so much of its history seemed irretrievable. Luckily

for those interested in urban history, New York's overburdened court

system led federal officials to build yet another courthouse in lower

Manhattan in the area around Foley Square. The site chosen was the city

block that made up the south-east point of the Five Points. Thanks to

far-sighted federal legislation, the construction project included funding

for an archaeological dig in the area before the courthouse could be

erected. Beginning their excavations in 1991, the archaeologists

unearthed approximately 850,000 artifacts, mostly shards and scraps, but

also hundreds of fascinating objects that provide a unique glimpse into

antebellum Five Points life. Thanks to Dr. Rebecca Yamin, director of the

project, scholars who were aware of the Five Points dig have been able to

visit the archaeologists' offices in the basement of the World Trade Center

and view some of the objects they uncovered. Thanks to the world-wide web,

anyone can learn about the archaeologists findings, as the General Services

Administration has created a web-site that describes the project's origins,

the history of the Five Points, and reproduces photographs of more than one

hundred of the objects uncovered during the dig.

The main strength of the Five Points web-site

(http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm) is its images--of the archaeological

dig and its various "features," of historical prints and photographs of

the Five Ponts and tenement dwellers, and of the artifacts themselves.

Consequently it makes little sense to use a text-only browser such as

Lynx to gain access to the site. Images presented include the best-known

depictions of antebellum Five Points, such as "Five Points in 1827" from

the _Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York_ of 1855, as well as

images of saloons and tenements from _Harper's Weekly and _Frank Leslie's

Illustrated Newspaper_. The site's creators also include an excellent

selection of maps, including an 1857 insurance map color-coded to indicate

the type of building on each lot and another detailing the location of the

"Collect" pond over which the Five Points was built.

The most fascinating images, though, are the artifacts themselves.

These are grouped in five categories: the Pearl Street Tanneries, the

Hoffmans (well-to-do bakers), the Irish Tenement and Saloon, A Chatham

Street Oyster House, and a miscellaneous section called "From Needle Trades

to Street Musicians." Among the most interesting is a set of monkey

bones, probably the remains of a monkey used by Italian organ grinders

to collect money from their audiences. A lice comb reminds us that the

contemporary descriptions of filth in these tenements were often accurate.

The many chamber pots found by the archaeologists reflect the

inconveniences of life before indoor plumbing. The hundreds of clay pipes

unearthed in the project (a sample of which are reproduced at the site)

demonstrate that artists' ubiquitous depictions of Irish-Americans

with pipes in their mouths may not have been an exaggeration. Those who

are not of an archaeological bent may find the dozens of bottles and cups

a bit repetitious. One must admire the tenacity of the archaeologists

involved in this part of the project, however, as they have identified the

manufacturer and country of origin of virtually every one of them.

Having visited the offices of these archaeologists at the World Trade

Center, I know there are some other artifacts which might have been

included in the web-site rather than so many bottles and cups.

One is a "nursing cup," a device women who are breast-feeding their babies

use to protect their tender nipples. I have heard that one of the

archaeologists has given a lecture on toys found at the site, but other

than a few marbles these are not displayed at the web-site either. The

archaeologists also found, but did not include in the web-site, some items

with Hebrew lettering on them, possibly used to bind bunches of cloth used

in the garment industry.

This raises the question of what else might be missing from the

site. Because the focus is on the artifacts, only the briefest

description of the history of the Five Points is provided. Although there

is a picture of the "Old Brewery," there is no description of its

significance, so only experts on New York City history who browse the site

will know that this was the most infamous tenement of the antebellum

period. The Five Points was also a truly multi-ethnic neighborhood, with

the city's highest concentrations of blacks, Irish, Jews, Chinese, and

Italians at various points in its history. Yet the site does not describe

this in any detail (the "Who lived at the Five Points" page merely states

that it was a "working-class neighborhood"). Having met many of the

archaeologists involved in the project, I know that they know these

things, but leaving it out of the web-site means that those who visit it

must be aware of these facts beforehand to get the most out of the site.

The web-site's creators plan eventually to put their detailed census

information about the block into the web site, and this may help those who

visit the site better understand the Five Points' ethnic composition.

According to the site's creators, "the archaeological remains of

hard work and industry stand in stark contrast to contemporary

descriptions of Five Points, which were blatantly biased." This is the

overall theme of the web-site. As someone who is now at work on a

book-length study of the Five Points, I have two reactions to this

statement. First, the archaeologists are absolutely right that

contemporaries generally described only the bad and none of the good in

the Five Points. But not all contemporaries were so biased that their

observations are rendered completely useless. Some like Lewis Pease (the

director of the Five Points House of Industry) and Charles Loring Brace

(founder of the Children's Aid Society) had real sympathy for the Five

Pointers and their observations are valuable despite their prejudices.

Secondly, the sheer number of horrifying stories about the Five Points

leads one who carefully studies its history to conclude that there really

WERE some horrible things going on there that cannot simply be dismissed

as imaginative creations of bigoted observers. There were parents who

allowed their children to go hungry while spending their last pennies on

liquor. There were madams who hired young girls to do housework but then

forced them into prostitution, locking them into rooms with their

customers until the girls had lost their virginity and their customers

had paid their ten dollars. There were families so destitute that they

had to burn their only furniture and bedding to keep warm in the winter

and could only eat on alternate days. There were basement tenement

apartments whose very walls oozed green and brown slime leaking from the

outhouse vaults just a few feet away. The creators of the Five Points

web-site never say that these things did not occur, but by emphasizing

"hard work and industry" and not mentioning the seamier side of the Five

Points, someone unfamiliar with the Five Points' reputation might leave

the site with the assumption that everyone who lived there could afford

imported ceramics and bottles of beer.

The Five Points thus was clearly a place of contrasts. Abject

poverty was prevalent, but so too was the industry and hard work that

allowed so many of its immigrant residents to improve their lives and move

to more respectable parts of the city. The Five Points Archaeological

Project web-site contains reminders of both sides of life in this infamous

slum, though it is especially valuable in documenting the positive side.

Anyone interested in the material culture of the nineteenth century will

find it a rewarding site to explore. High school and college students

will also find the site interesting and informative, provided that they

are given some background on its history, population, and reputation in

advance. Finally, the site reminds us that archaeology is not simply a

tool for studying the ancient world, but something of immense value even

to those of us who study the not-so-distant past.

Copyright (c) 1997 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This

work may be copied for non-profit educational use if

proper credit is given to the author and the list. For

other permission, please contact H-Net@H-Net.Msu.Edu.

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Response from

The Five Points web site began as an archaeological exhibit which is

still on view in the new Federal Courthouse at Foley Square--directly

above the site of the 1991 excavations at the Five Points. The exhibit

narrative was meant to introduce a general audience, which may be

familiar with the work of Asbury and Sante, to the deeper complexities

of a neighborhood that has been portrayed by popular historians only as

the infamous Five Points. Hence our choice of focus on subjects which

directly confront such mythologies.

The Web site, intended as an extension of this exhibit, follows a

similar script with the section on tanneries coming first and the German

tailors/second-hand clothing dealers and Italian musicians coming last.

The particular assemblages chosen for inclusion represent different

periods in the site's history as well as different sides of the

block--e.g. the iron hook and bone fragments from the eighteenth-century

tanning industry; elegant ceramics and glassware from an early

ninteenth-century artisan's household; Staffordshire ware, medicine

bottles, and master ink bottles from a mid-nineteenth-century Pearl

Street Irish tenement/saloon; drinking glasses and smoking pipes from a

mid-nineteenth-centufy Chatham Street oyster house; textile scraps and

pins from a mid-nineteenth-century Baxter Street German tailor, and a

late nineteenth-century Italian organ grinder's monkey.

Context is an essential concept in historical archaeology. The

artifacts missed by Anbinder were not included because they didn't

belong to one of the chosen assemblages, whose integrity and context are

crucial to the interpretations presented in the text. (Incidentally, a

nursing shield protects a nursing mother's clothes and the seals with

Hebrew letters indicate that chickens had been slaughtered according to

kosher law.) While it was difficult to portray the true complexity of

the neighborhood at any one moment in time, the intention was to give

some idea of change over time as well as diversity in the population,

something Anbinder thought we downplayed. The Web page includes only a

small portion of the excavation results and a minimal amount of

interpretation, but our primary goal was to stimulate questions--about

the accuracy of contemporary accounts of Five Points, of course, but

also about what urban archaeology adds to the historical record, how

cities develop and change, how the ethnic diversity of the past relates

to the ethnic diversity of the present, and many more.

We appreciate Tyler Anbinder's ongoing interest in our work on the Five

Points project and thank him for giving our Web site so much thought.

It has not been easy for historical archaeologists to forge collegial

relationships with historians even though we are often struggling with

the same issues. We are grateful to Tyler for his several visits to our

New York laboratory and look forward to his book on the Five Points.

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