Foley Square

Foley Square stands atop a site that was once a deep, pristine freshwater source for early New York known as Collect Pond. As the city expanded around it, the pond became so heavily polluted by industrial waste and sewage that it eventually posed a significant health risk to the surrounding community. City engineers drained and filled the basin in the early nineteenth century to eliminate the standing water, but the work was notoriously shoddy. Because the ground remained unstable and swampy, the neighborhood that rose above it, known as Five Points, quickly earned a reputation for being one of the most perilous and impoverished slums in the world.