Buildings: Entrances to Shadow City
Chinatown / Bowery
(One of the oldest buildings in New York, located on what many say is the city’s oldest street, this townhouse was originally the mansion of a wealthy man. Later, it became a well-known tavern and brothel.)
(Formerly the headquarters of the feared Bowery B’hoy Gang, this is the building where they planned their deadly battles against their sworn enemies, the Dead Rabbits. A hidden passage leads from an old outhouse in the backyard to an arsenal in the Shadow City. )
(Before it became Chinatown, this neighborhood was a slum called Five Points, and local criminals built a maze of tunnels under the streets—some connected to the Shadow City and others not. Later, assassins from one of New York’s first Chinese gangs used the tunnels underneath Pell Street to repeatedly escape from justice.)
(These buildings were constructed only a few years before the street in front of them became a disgusting open sewer. Afterwards, the smell was so horrible that even the authorities avoided the area, and a band of river pirates was able to live here in peace for almost a decade. They built tunnels below #504 that lead to the Shadow City and the Hudson River.)
(A wealthy merchant built this house when the neighborhood was one of the ritziest in the city. Twenty years later, when the surrounding blocks became a horrific slum, the merchant’s son decided to open an opium den in the building’s hidden sub-basement and link it to one of the tunnels of the Shadow City.)
(A bootlegger used a passage that leads from the Shadow City to the basement of this church to deliver toxic, chemical-laced whisky to many of the taverns in lower Manhattan.)