The notorious Five Points neighborhood in Manhattan was memorialized by Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York. It told of one of the worst slums that ever existed and the Irish and Nativist gangs that battled for neighborhood dominance in the 1850s and 60s. While highly fictionalized, this story was based on a very real neighborhood centered in what is today Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Did you know that the Five Points neighborhood was one of the first Jewish neighborhoods in New York City? Before the great Eastern European migration to the Lower East Side from 1880 to 1920, Jewish immigrants, predominantly from Eastern Europe, settled, suffered, and built their synagogues within the confines of the squalid and unsanitary conditions of the neighborhood.
Highlights:
- Visit the Museum at Eldridge Street and see a fully restored magnificent 1887 synagogue
- Explore how the neighborhood came about, the communities who lived here, and the different Jewish congregations that sprouted up
- Learn about the first Jewish garment district
- Pass the oldest Jewish cemetery in the US, and dive into its history
- Learn about the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 in Russia, and the response from New York’s Chinatown community
Join a Museum at Eldridge Street expert guide on Sunday, April 21, 1:30pm as we walk through Five Points, once known as “The Ould Sixth Ward,” and explore how this diverse group of residents dealt with the conditions of their Lower East Side home. We will meet on 217 Park Row, New York, NY 10038, across the street from Chatham Square Cemetery.
