Primer Período (1844-1865):

Neighborhoods:

• San Lázaro, San Miguel, San Antón, and Santa Bárbara formed a boggy strip along the North wall of Santo Domingo. They were often impassable, full of quagmires and rickety walkways made of palm, and were adjacent to the old churches.
• Pueblo Nuevo and El Centro were the neighborhoods of the central strip of the city. Pueblo Nuevo emerged during the First Phase with most of its homes being shacks, but a good portion of its residents were small business owners, which meant that the neighborhood was relatively booming. El Centro was the city's wealthiest neighborhood on a political and economic level.
• La Misericordia in the South of the city was the neighborhood containing the Santa Clara and La Fortaleza Convents. It was in a similar state as the Northern sectors, but was less densely populated.
• The neighborhoods of Ponce (located on the outskirts of the San José Fort and extending past the Arzobispo Portes Fort to the corner of Consistorial Street) and El Solar de Santa Ana (on the East side), were the underbelly of the urban life of the day, rife with drunkenness, fights, prostitution, and general crime.
• The urban areas along the walls of the city were the most wretched. Homes were built of mud walling, were disorderly in their arrangement, and had little in terms of doors, floors, and solid walls.