Five Points is the New York neighborhood at the center of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.
The film is set mainly in the Five Points district of Lower Manhattan during the 1860s. Historically, Five Points developed near the former Collect Pond and became known for overcrowding, poverty, political conflict, and gang activity. Scorsese uses the neighborhood as the setting for the rivalry between Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam Vallon.
The film draws from Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book The Gangs of New York, but it changes characters, chronology, and events for dramatic purposes. The real Five Points was a district, not a single building or gang headquarters, and historians often distinguish the film’s stylized violence from the more complicated historical record.
The Civil War draft riots of 1863 form an important historical backdrop. Those riots occurred in New York while the neighborhood was already marked by severe social and political tensions.