New York City (Fodor's, 2012) - Fodor's [25]
THE GANGS OF FIVE POINTS
In the mid-19th century the Five Points area was perhaps the city’s most notorious and dangerous neighborhood. The confluence of five streets—Mulberry, Anthony (now Worth), Cross (now Park), Orange (now Baxter), and Little Water (no longer in existence)—had been built over a drainage pond that had been filled in the 1820s. When the buildings began to sink into the mosquito-filled muck, middle-class residents abandoned their homes. Buildings were chopped into tiny apartments that were rented to the poorest of the poor, who at this point were newly emancipated slaves and Irish immigrants fleeing famine.
Newspaper accounts at the time tell of robberies and other violent crimes on a daily basis. And with corrupt political leaders like William M. “Boss” Tweed more concerned with lining their pockets than patrolling the streets, keeping order was left to the club-wielding hooligans portrayed in Gangs of New York.
But the neighborhood, finally razed in the 1880s to make way for Columbus Park, has left a lasting legacy. In the music halls where different ethnic groups grudgingly came together, the Irish jig and the African-American shuffle combined to form a new type of fancy footwork called tap dancing.
Kim Lau Square.
Ten streets converge at this labyrinthine intersection crisscrossed at odd angles by pedestrian walkways. Standing on an island in this busy area is the Kim Lau Arch, honoring Chinese casualties in American wars. A statue on the square’s eastern edge pays tribute to a Qing Dynasty official named Lin Ze Xu, the Fujianese minister who sparked the Opium War by banning the drug. | Chinatown | Subway: 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall; J, Z to Chambers St.
Mahayana Buddhist Temple.
You’ll be able to say you saw New York’s largest Buddha here at the largest Buddhist temple in Chinatown; it’s at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge Arch on the Bowery. A donation of $2 is requested. There’s a great gift shop on the second floor. Before its incarnation as a place of worship in 1997, this was the Rosemary, an adult-movie theater. | 133 Canal St., at the Bowery, Chinatown | 10002 | 212/343–9592 | Daily 8–7 | Subway: B, D to Grand St.
Washington Market Park.
This landscaped recreation space with a gazebo and playground—ideal for permitting the kids to blow off steam—was named after the great food market that once sprawled over the area. Across the street at the elementary school are a stout red tower resembling a lighthouse and a fence with iron ship figures—reminders of the neighborhood’s dockside past. There’s a small greenmarket here on Wednesday and Saturday. | Greenwich St. between Chambers and Duane Sts., TriBeCa | 10007 | Subway: 1, 2, 3 to Chambers St.
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Planning
SoHo: Top Touring Experiences | Top Attractions | Worth Noting | Galleries
Little Italy and NoLIta: Top Touring Experiences | Top Attractions | Worth Noting
Updated by Arthur Bovino
SoHo (south of Houston) and NoLIta (north of Little Italy) are shopper’s paradises, super-trendy, painfully overcrowded on weekends, often overpriced, and undeniably glamorous. A few decades ago, though, these neighborhoods were quiet warrens of artists’ lofts and galleries, and the only reason to visit was to go gallery hopping.
SoHo was the epicenter of New York’s art scene in the late 1970s, and has since evolved into a Mecca of mostly chain retailers. On the side streets, however, a handful of galleries still exist, tucked away between higher-end stores such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton and a few local boutiques. That said, SoHo hasn’t lost its charm. In between whipping out your credit card or feverishly searching for a café with empty seats, take a few seconds to savor the Belgian brick cobblestones and turn-of-the-20th-century lampposts, adorned with cast-iron