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Primary source: "Petition to Have the Five Points Opened," 1831.
Caption: Merchants owning property along the periphery of Five Points petitioned the municipal government in 1829 to demolish the heart of the slum by widening and extending Anthony and Cross Streets.
That the place known as "Five points" has long been notorious . . . as being the nursery where every species of vice is conceived and matured; that it is infested by a class of the most abandoned and desperate character . . .
[They] are abridged from enjoying themselves in their sports, from the apprehension . . . that they may be enticed from the path of rectitude, by being familiarized with vice; and thus advancing step by step, be at last swallowed up in this sink of pollution, this vortex of irremediable infamy.
In conclusion your Committee remark, that this hot–bed of infamy, this modern Sodom, is situated in the very heart of your City, and near the centre of business and of respectable population. . . . Remove this nucleus—scatter its present population over a larger surface—throw open this part of your city to the enterprise of active and respectable men, and you will have effected much for which good men will be grateful.
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"Petition to Have the Five Points Opened," Board of Assistant Aldermen documents (24 October 1831), Municipal Archives, City of New York.
Courtesy of Municipal Archives, New York City.
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