Ragged Dick takes place in 1860s New York and is specifically focused in Lower Manhattan. At the time, this area housed some of the city's most important business institutions and some of its poorest residents. It's important to note that New York City, one of America's densest cities today, was even more crowded at the end of the 19th century. Although Alger frequently asserts that individuals live freer and more prosperous lives under American democracy than they do under the British monarchy, quality of life for poor New Yorkers was abysmal, as the photographer Jacob Riis would show in his landmark book, How the Other Half Lives, published about a decade after Ragged Dick.
At the beginning of the novel, Dick is homeless and drifts around Manhattan, sleeping wherever he can find a safe spot. Some of his peers, including his occasional tormentor Micky Maguire, live in the Five Points, a 19th-century slum notorious for crime and poverty situated in what is now the Lower East Side. When Dick learns to save up his money and starts renting a room, he chooses one on Mott Street, a poor but more respectable area.
As Dick starts to improve himself and makes friends with wealthy and well-connected friends, he becomes familiar with some of Manhattan's most luxurious spaces. With Frank and Mr. Whitney, he visits Astor House, one of the most famous hotels in the United States at the time. When Mr. Greyson invites Dick to Sunday lunch, he gets to eat inside a Fifth Avenue mansion. And after he saves up some money and opens a bank account, he gets to enter this imposing financial institution as a customer rather than shining shoes on the street outside. Even as the novel stays rooted in the same Manhattan neighborhoods, the gradual change of the setting in which Dick spends his time emphasizes Alger's argument that individuals can achieve great success through hard work and thrift.
