3. Mosco Street

Essex Street Market top 8 food finds-NYC-Untapped Cities-Jinwoo Chong-4

Mosco Street, though small, is actually one of the last standing remnants of Manhattan’s old Five Points neighborhood, bound by Center Street, Bowery, and Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. The Five Points earned an unsightly reputation in Chinatown‘s earliest years for rampant disease and unbridled gang violence. The Five Points Gang, of surprisingly Italian-American and Irish origin, controlled the area and kept it a dangerous slum for close to 70 years. The area, including Mosco Street, was the scene of the Dead Rabbits Riot, a gang-altercation between the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys that was fictionalized in the 2002 film “Gangs of New York,” which takes place in the Five Points.