All language subtitles for 5. City of Immigrants

The Five Points during the era of Copper...

...was the preeminent immigrant,
working class neighborhood of New York City.

There was an awful lot of Irish immigrants
to New York.

They had their way paid
by their landlord...

...who would rather pay them to go to
America than to support the poor houses...

...and the work houses back in Ireland.
So a lot of these people who came...

...desperately poor, nothing more
than the rags on their backs...

...they are trying to do whatever
they can to make it.

And it was very important for us to show
that the city...

...wasn't just the Irish in Five Points.

That there were Chinese,
and Germans, and Italians.

It was then, as it is now,
a real melting pot.

As the Five Points
became even more crowded...

...it began to show all the symptoms
of what we think of as slum.

The standard of living
was terrible and the level of crime escalates.

But you still see a people
who are trying to coexist and get along.

Trying to make the best
of a bad situation basically.

Even the poorest Five Pointers,
people who might have worked...

...as laundresses for example,
or as day laborers...

...managed to open bank accounts,
managed to save some money...

...managed to die with some bread
in the bank.

People made a life in that neighborhood.

But they also left that neighborhood,
and used it as a stepping stone...

...to go to other places in New York
and America.

The family and community bonds
in that neighborhood...

...which would help people survive,
are the family and community bonds...

...In a sense, that built America.