Mulberry Street (Manhattan)

Mulberry Street is a principal thoroughfare in

Mulberry Bend, formed by Mulberry Street on the east and Orange Street on the west, was historically part of the core of the infamous Five Points; the southwest corner of Mulberry Bend formed part of the Five Points intersection for which the neighborhood was named. Aside from Mulberry, the other four streets forming Five Points were Anthony Street (now Worth Street), Cross Street (now Mosco Street), Orange Street (now Baxter Street), and Little Water Street (which no longer exists).^[2]

Location

Mulberry is located between Baxter and

Further south past Bayard Street, on the west side of the street, lies Columbus Park, which was created in 1897.^[4] The southwest corner of the park (away from Mulberry Street) is the site of the original Five Points intersection. The east side of the street is now lined with Chinatown's funeral homes.^{[citation needed]}

Mulberry Bend

The street was named after the

For the urban reformer Jacob Riis, Mulberry Bend epitomized the worst of the city's slums: "A Mulberry Bend Alley" contrasted with "Mulberry Bend becomes a park" were two of the photographs illustrating Jacob Riis's call for renewal in The Battle with the Slum (1902).^[7] In response to reformers such as Riis, the city in the 1890s bought out many of the slumlords and replaced tenements with Columbus Park.^[8]

Notable buildings

The

The Italian American Museum is at 155 Mulberry and Grand Street in the building that used to house the Italian immigrant bank Banca Stabile.^{[9][10][11][12]}

• 
  Black Horse Tavern Mulberry And Park St.
• 
  Saint Patrick's Old Cathedral

  (1815)
• 
  St. Philip's Church, Mulberry St.

Culture

Social structure

The New York Times sent its reporters to characterize the Little Italy/Mulberry neighborhood in May 1896:

They are laborers; toilers in all grades of manual work; they are artisans, they are junkman, and here, too, dwell the rag pickers....There is a monster colony of Italians who might be termed the commercial or shop keeping community of the Latins. Here are all sorts of stores, pensions, groceries, fruit emporiums, tailors, shoemakers, wine merchants, importers, musical instrument makers....There are notaries, lawyers, doctors, apothecaries, undertakers.... There are more bankers among the Italians than among any other foreigners except the Germans in the city.^[13]

• 
  Children sleeping in Mulberry Street (1890)
• 
  Produce stand on Mulberry Street
• 
  Tai Chi practiced on Mulberry Street
• 
  Feast in Little Italy on Mulberry

Feast of San Gennaro

During the

• The King of Mulberry Street, by Donna Jo Napoli. A young boy in the 1890s travels alone from Napoli (Naples), Italy to New York, where he settles on Mulberry Street.

Music

• Billy Joel's song "Big Man on Mulberry Street" is a jazz-influenced song from his album The Bridge (1986).^[14]
• Twenty One Pilots' "Mulberry Street" from their album Scaled and Icy.

References

Further reading

• Frunza, Bogdana Simina (2008). Streetscape and Ethnicity: New York's Mulberry Street and the Redefinition of the Italian American Ethnic Identity.
• JSTOR 25144462
  .
• Pozzetta, George E. (1979). Harney, Robert F.; Scarpaci, J. Vincenza (eds.). "The Mulberry District of New York City: The Years before World War One". Little Italies in North America. Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Ontario. pp. 7–40.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mulberry Street (Manhattan).

Wikiquote has quotations related to Mulberry Street.

• New York Songlines: Mulberry Street, a virtual walking tour
• Mulberry Street Storefronts - photographs of buildings and stores along Mulberry St from Chinatown through Little Italy
• "Mulberry Street, New York City". World Digital Library. 1900.

See also

• Mulberry (disambiguation)
• Mulberry Street (disambiguation)

40°43′13″N 73°59′49″W / 40.7202°N 73.9970°W / 40.7202; -73.9970