Unit 1 - Unit 2 - Unit 3 - Unit 4 - Unit 5 - Unit 6

 

TOUR UNIT TWO

 

The Lower East Side- City of Immigrants: From the "Five Points" to the Present

 

Day 1

 

Infrastructural Revolutions: The Grid, the Erie Canal, Streetcars, Railroads and Water

 

HA 68-77; 82-83 (review Divine on the Erie Canal and railroads)

Transit and Infrastructure Timeline

Crane, Maggie a Girl of the Streets, Chapters 1-5

Infrastructural Revolution DBQ

 

How do the infrastructural improvements of the 1820s and 30s engender the immigration of the 1830s and 40s? How do these improvements, in turn, engender further immigration?

 

1) What is the significance of the Erie Canal? The Croton System?

2) How does infrastructure drive growth and immigration?

 

Day 2

Immigration and the Birth of the Five Points

 

HA 80-81; 84-85; 98-99

Epic Chapter 18

Five Points and Cholera DBQ

Crane, Maggie a Girl of the Streets, Chapters 6-8

What was the view of the cause of poverty, disease and the nature of the poor in the 1840s?

 

1)Using the handout, explain how the outsiders view of the Five Points changed from the 1840s to the 1890s to today.

2) What is the class and gender basis of the temperance and moral reform movement in NYC?

Day 3-4

 

Streetwalkers, Sinners and Slums

 

Finish Crane, Maggie: A Girl of The Streets

Stansell, City of Women

 

1)How might the Stansell reading inform your understanding of Maggie ? What is the place of gender in the elite perception of the poor?

 

2) What is the nature of the fighting in the book. Who is fighting whom? Why is their fighting significant? How does gender affect the nature of the fighting and the outcome?

Day 5-6

 

Five Points Run Riot: The Astor Place Riot (1849), The Temperance Riots (1853) and the Police Riot (1857)

 

Epic Chapter 19 and 22

To turn in:

Please read Epic and the viewers' guide to the Five Points video and answer one of the questions below (to turn in)

Choose one "riot" from the Five Points Run Riot: Class Conflict in NY timeline and describe it in a few sentences (to turn in)

in class video: Five Points

 

 

1) What was the significance of the theater and saloon in the lives of the Irish-American working class?

 

2) How were the Irish perceived by the "native" American public? How do Evangelical Protestant reformers explain poverty? How do they use religion as a means of reform, uplift, social control? Why do they focus on temperance as a means of reform?

3) How did party politics (Democratic, Know-Nothing, Republican) contribute to the riots of the 1840s and 50s?

Day 7-8

Abolition, The Draft Riots and African-American Migration up Manhattan

 

HA, 96-7, 138-9

Epic Chapter 24

Draft Riots DBQ

 

 

For the following questions use the Draft Riots DBQ, Epic and HA for reserach. Make a blank base map of Manhattan on a blank 8 and 1/2 by 11 inch sheet and make two copies (save the original for later assignments):

 

1)Using the map in Gotham and a blank map of your own creation, create a geographical timeline of the Draft Riots. Where and when did the events of the riot unfold? Create a legend that numbers each critical event in order, then put the numbers in the proper location on the map. Use colior to make the map more legible (see maps in HAand the DBQ for guidance as well)

 

2) On another map blank, plot the migration of African Americans up Manhattan Island. Where, when and why do they move? Illustrate the migration and explain it on your map.

 

EXTRA CREDIT: See Gangs of New York and assess its historical accuracy. Does it get the facts right? Does it get the story right? Use specific examples form the film and your reading.

Day 9

 

Tammany Hall: The Rise and Fall of Machine Politics

 

Epic Chapter 26

Riordan, Honest Graft from Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Handout of Thomas Nast cartoons

 

Discuss tour location and choose stops (in groups)

 

1) In serving itself did Tammany serve a public good? What was so terrible about the machine? Who were more democratic, the bosses or the reformers? With whom do you sympathize?

Day 10

 

The Tenement and Housing Reform

 

HA, 110-111

Slide Sheet: The Five Points, Jacob Riis and Reforming the "Slums"

Blight Chart

 

Classroom and web research

 

1)How did reformers seek to deal with the tenement problem? How was it finally solved?

 

2) How do developments in public health, city administration and the secularization of society converge to change attitudes toward the poor, poverty and the slums?

Day 11

 

The New Immigrants: Kleinedeutschland, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Jewish Lower East Side

 

HA, 98-99, 132-133, 136-137

Epic Chapter 33

 

Submit quiz questions

 

1) How do immigrants choose their destinations in NYC? How does one group replace another?

 

Day 12

 

Tour: The Lower East Side- City of Immigrants: From the Five Points to the Present

 

Essex and Delancey (SE) 9am to 3pm

 

Day 13

Quiz, debrief on tour and post contributions on the Gotham map website