[New York City]:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE OLD BREWERY AT THE FIVE POINTS N.Y. AS IT APPEARED DEC.R 1st 1852 PREVIOUS TO ITS BEING TORN DOWN BY THE LADIES HOME MISSIONARY SOC.Y OF THE M.E. CHURCH [caption ... An attractive, beautifully handcolored lithograph of the centerpiece of the notorious Five Points district and one of New York City's most notorious tenement buildings, known as "The Old Brewery." The Five Points District of New York was originally home to Collect Pond, a reservoir where most of Manhattan sourced its drinking water. Businesses built up to make use of the pond over the years, including a slaughterhouse, several tanneries, and of course Coulthard Brewery, built in 1792. The profusion of businesses on the small pond's shores eventually contaminated it beyond use for its original purpose, and the pond was filled in 1811. The result, however, was a damp, poorly drained area plagued by insects and soggy foundations, and the region quickly turned into a slum. The Brewery itself did not survive the Panic of 1837, and was converted into tenements. For the next fifteen years, the "Old Brewery" became the country's most infamous den of iniquity, with at least 221 people living in its thirty-five apartments. Urban legend holds that the number was closer to 1000, and supposedly the building sustained an average of one murder per night until it was demolished in 1852. As the caption of this lithograph states, the Ladies Home Missionary Society of the Methodist church banded together to buy the building, de

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