Slumming It in Five Points, Chinatown, and the Bowery: An Audio Tour

During the Gilded Age, millionaires would leave their uptown mansions and head downtown to “go slumming” in the squalid neighborhoods of Five Points, Mulberry Bend, Chinatown and The Bowery.

On this walking tour, you’ll follow in their footsteps, visiting the notorious neighborhoods that inspired the world’s first photo-journalist, Jacob Riis, to write How the Other Half Lives, which exposed the horrors of the worst slums in human history. This is also where tattooing, tap dancing, the Jim Crow character, and blackface minstrel acts were first invented.

The tour starts at Collect Pond Park where you’ll learn how the area transformed from swamp to slum in the 1800s. From there, you’ll wind through some of the city’s most historic neighborhoods: the African Burial Ground, Five Points, Mulberry Bend, and Dr Sun Yat-Sen Plaza in Columbus Park before venturing into Chinatown. There, I’ll point out legendary restaurants like Hop Kee (childhood favorite of author and TV chef Anthony Bourdain), Wo Hop (given an award by the James Beard Foundation -- the “Oscars of the food world”) and he century-old Nam Wah Tea Parlor (location used by famous movies.) Then we'll shuffle up the Bowery and end on Canal Street at the On Leong Tong’s gangland headquarters.

On this two-hour tour, you’ll:

• See the places where P.T. Barnum began his career as a showman, Irving Berlin got his start as a singing newsboy, and songwriter Stephen Foster died as a penniless “Bowery Bum”
• Relive the Dead Rabbit Riot, depicted in Martin Scorcese’s film Gangs of New York; the Doctor’s Riot, ignited by grave-robbing medical students; and the ridiculous Straw Hat Riots
• Decode the symbolism of the African Burial Ground National Monument, where tens of thousands of bodies still lie beneath your feet
• Visit the headquarters of the two Chinese secret societies that fought the deadly “Tong Wars,” learn the gruesome origins of the term “hatchet men,” and stand at Bloody Angle, where the Chinese Theater Massacre raged
• Hear colorful tales of opium dens, brothels and saloons with names like The Flea Bag, The Hell Hole, The Plague, The Morgue, and Suicide Hall
• Take in New York’s largest golden Buddha at the Mahayama Temple Buddhist Association
• Experience exotic flavors like black sesame, taro and green tea at the Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory

This may not be New York’s most scenic neighborhood... but it might be the most unforgettable! See the area come alive with TellBetter tours. We bring stories vividly to life with actors, sound effects and music.

Please note that the tour covers some pretty sordid behavior – PG stuff – so parents beware.

CREDITS: Many of the stories and quotes were discovered in these excellent books: Five Points, The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum, by Tyler Anbinder; The Bowery, The Strange History of New York's Oldest Street, by Stephen Paul DeVillo; Tong Wars, The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown, by Scott D Seligman. Also the amazing website