That very auspicious name was given to the neighborhood built in the early 19th century over the site of Collect Pond.
A pristine body of water in colonial times, Collect Pond was basically an open sewer by 1800. It was located near today’s Centre and Lafayette Streets.
The city filled the pond in 1811, and Paradise Square sprang up over it, according to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
But Paradise Square only lasted a few decades. The water table was so high, the neighborhood began sinking—and emitting a rancid smell, prompting affluent families to leave.
By the 1830s it was known as Five Points, the notorious slum that was a breeding ground for crime, gangs, and disease.
The Paradise name lived on until the early 1900s in the form of Paradise Park, as seen in the NYPL postcard above. It was renamed Columbus Park in 1911.
Tags: Collect Pond, Columbus Park, Five Points, New York in the 19th Century, notorious New York slums, Paradise Park NYC, Paradise Square
Ephemeral New York 
June 21, 2010 at 8:00 am |
[…] http://upcoming.current.com/nyblogs?format=rss […]
June 21, 2010 at 6:34 pm |
[…] life of Paradise Square, which was built on top of the Collect Pond [Ephemeral […]
June 22, 2010 at 5:57 pm |
I’m a bit confused–wasn’t it Mulberry Bend Park prior to becoming Columbus Park?
June 22, 2010 at 7:25 pm |
My understanding is that it went from Paradise Park to Columbus Park. I’m going by some old articles in the New York Times archive. It seems like Mulberry Bend Park may have been an informal name or a separate yet adjacent park. Lets see what else I can find…
June 26, 2010 at 12:29 am |
There never was a “Paradise Park”. Prodded by Jacob Riis, the city, in 1895, seized private property and demolished the tenements located in what was left of the infamous Mulberry Bend. The park, built on the location and opened in 1897, was named Mulberry Bend Park. It was renamed Columbus Park in 1911.
http://www.tenement.org/encyclopedia/parks.htm
June 26, 2010 at 4:39 am |
The public record begs to differ. A few examples:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A05E1DD153FE432A2575AC1A9619C94669FD7CF
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9902E1DA103BEF33A25755C2A9619C94629ED7CF
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C0CE2DF1330E633A25752C1A9679D94699FD7CF
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9406EFDD1E31E033A25753C3A9679D94659ED7CF
June 29, 2010 at 4:42 pm |
Yes, but all of those are pre-95. I’ll bet it was paradise park pre-95, Mulberry Bend 95-11, and Columbus thereafter.
Here’s the public record on Mulberry Bend: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3A*&q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22mulberry+bend+park%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Most of those articles are between 95-11,a lthough one is from 94–interestingly, it is about protesting the condition of the park.
June 29, 2010 at 5:08 pm |
Thanks. That’s probably why the postcard included both names, Paradise Park and Mulberry Bend.
February 10, 2011 at 8:37 am |
Reading about Poverty Hollow and bumped into Paradise Park. The latter seemed to be derived from Paradise Square and was considered synonymous. Must have surely been a sarcastic self-infliction, and described a specific plot of public space near, but not within, confines of Mulberry Bend, later Columbus, Park. Much smaller, it was on the other side of Worth and bit up the block towards Centre. It’s mapped pretty clearly, but not named, on old atlases. Without extensive amounts of excavation, managed to find a description using the name and identifying the location written in 1851.
I see internet writing that implies that Paradise Square pre-dated descent into Five Points. Very hard to imagine that it was some sort of high-toned, earnest moniker. Contemporary accounts and others long in print suggest the district was a foul, unwholesome situation before the warrens of miserable houses went up to shelter the powerless.
Paradise Square/Park was the focus of serious missionary effort by Methodist Episcopal outfit commencing around 1849. Interesting to note that Methodist “revivalist” outdoor preaching had been done for generations in Sheffield (England) in – you guessed it – Paradise Square.
The name spread beyond the confines of the Square (really a Triangle) and like a lot of other squares in town, gave its name to the surrounding district. Tammany types – like their pals in Poverty Hollow – used Paradise Park to describe a neighborhood, not merely a small, fenced-in park. I’m inclined to think that Paradise Park superseded Five Points in speech at an earlier date than in print, and we may be indulging a bit of imaginary conjecture to reverse the sequence.
August 13, 2012 at 12:16 am |
[…] kids down around Mulberry Bend got a jump on the tradition, however, and began grabbing hats off factory workers’ heads and […]
September 20, 2012 at 5:14 am |
[…] Street really was a canal back in the early 19th century; it carried filthy water from polluted Collect Pond, near today’s Lafayette Street, and emptied it into the […]
February 8, 2014 at 7:52 pm |
Paradise Park was the little triangular park where the Manhattan Supreme Court sits today. It was diagonally on the other side of the Five Points intersection from the Bend. http://nyc-architecture.com/SCC/insmap2.jpg
The park on the Bend was named after “Mulberry Bend”, and “Five Points” before becoming Columbus Park.
February 9, 2014 at 12:51 am |
Another place the confusion could have arisen is that Riis *did* call it “ANOTHER Paradise Park” when planning it. That was for comparison only; it was never actually called that.
(See also Anbinder, “Five Points” p.22; on Google Books).
October 13, 2014 at 1:32 pm |
Manhattan’s Collect Pond and London’s River Fleet: both large, fine supplies of fresh water which were sadly allowed to become open sewers, before disappearing in the 1800s.
November 17, 2014 at 7:20 am |
[…] Soon prostitution and rum shops arrived, followed by gang-related crime. Anyone who could move out of what was once called the Collect neighborhood did, and those who remained lived in Five Points, a wretched slum that persisted through most of the 19th century. […]
January 23, 2015 at 4:02 pm |
Paradise Park was opposite the bend. Check this out. http://newyorklookingback.blogspot.com/2011/03/origins-of-paradise-park.html
October 22, 2018 at 5:23 am |
[…] Number 28 Mulberry was once the doorway for the Banco Italia, which in 1881 served the growing Italian immigrant community pouring into Mulberry Bend. […]