Mulberry Bend

Orange and Mulberry streets headed from southeast to northwest then turned north at the "Bend" to avoid Collect Pond and surrounding low-lying wetland to the west.

Mulberry Bend was considered one of the worst parts of the Five Points, with multiple back alleyways such as Bandit's Roost, Bottle Alley and Ragpickers Row.

The following is from Jacob Riis's How The Other Half Lives:[2] Where Mulberry Street crooks like an elbow within hail of the old depravity of the Five Points, is "the Bend", foul core of New York’s slums.

Echoes of tinkling bells linger there still, but they do not call up memories of green meadows and summer fields; they proclaim the home-coming of the rag-picker’s cart.

In the scores of back alleys, of stable lanes and hidden byways, of which the rent collector alone can keep track, they share such shelter as the ramshackle structures afford with every kind of abomination rifled from the dumps and ash-barrels of the city.

Mulberry Street looking north to Bayard Street with Mulberry Bend on left, c. 1890
Mulberry Bend Park c. 1912, established in part due to the efforts of photojournalist Jacob Riis
Bandits' Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street , 1888 photograph by Jacob Riis