Clam sellers at the corner of Mulberry & Mosco Streets, New York City, around 1900:
The location in 2014:
This scene, looking up Mosco Street, is at the heart of what was once the Five Points neighborhood. Mosco Street was originally named Cross Street, and was one of the streets that formed the Five Points intersection, which was located a block in the opposite direction. This area became an infamous slum in the 19th century, and was the setting for the movie “Gangs of New York.” Today, the renamed Cross Street has been truncated to just one block; it ends at Mulberry Street, and all of the buildings on the west side of Mulberry (including the building on the far right of the first photo) were demolished to create Columbus Park. The building across the street is still there, although the corner entrance has been remodeled. Aside from that, the rest of the facade is still recognizable. Another difference is the makeup of the neighborhood; in 1900 this was a part of Little Italy, but today it has been absorbed into Chinatown.
A few details are missing that I think are relevant. Cross St was the original name, but it was also named Park St for almost 130 years before being renamed again for a community activist, Frank Mosco, in 1982. Park St is what many of us still remember it by.
Also, the demolished building on the far right of the older photo was not part of the original Columbus Park, since Park St still ran down to Baxter/Worth Sts, and the park ended to the left of the photo. The triangular space created where that building once stood had been an empty lot and a parking lot for decades, until Columbus Park was finally extended to Worth St in the 1980s, and that one block of Park/Mosco St was demapped. And so today there is only that one downhill block of Mosco left, from Mott to Mulberry, as you stated.