The Old Neighborhood. - Five Points The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum - book review

Five Points offers a fascinating if complex narrative of a legendary neighborhood as well as a "revisionist" study that challenges various urban legends and historical truisms. Since Five Points lost its identity as a distinctive neighborhood a century ago, and most New Yorkers probably don't know precisely where it was once located (the five points are now three and face the federal court house in Chinatown), few readers will come to the book with a preconception in need of revision. The book works better as a companion to such popular works as Luc Sante's Low Life and Herbert Asbury's venerable The Gangs of New York (soon to be a Martin Scorsese film) than as a corrective. After all, what would urban life be without urban legends?

James T. Fisher, a frequent Commonweal contributor, teaches history at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Commonweal Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group