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.  This highly fictionalized story took place in the 1850’s and 60’s but was based on a very real neighborhood centered in what is today’s Chinatown.

But did you know the real Five Points was also 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, immigrant Jews with no money from mostly Eastern Europe, settled and suffered and built their synagogues within the confines of this notorious slum.

Join urban historian and educator Bradley Shaw as he walks you through “The Ould Sixth Ward” and tells of how this diverse group of residents dealt with the squalid and unsanitary conditions.  

Some of the things you will learn about:

How the neighborhood came about

The people who lived there

The first Jewish garment district

The oldest Jewish cemetery in the US

The Jewish congregations of the area - some of the oldest in NYC

A Chinese response to a deadly Russian pogrom in 1903

Infamous streets and buildings