New York City has been the center of immigration to the United States for over 100 years, and Manhattan’s Chinatown has been a destination for Chinese immigrants for just as long. Before World War II, Chinatown was mainly a bachelor society centered around Pell, Doyers, and Mott Streets. It wasn’t until the immigration reforms of 1965 that many Chinese people were able to come to New York as a family. Since then Chinatown has been gradually expanding, going from only a few blocks near the Bowery, to encompassing Little Italy and moving more and more into the Lower East Side. In the 1970’s immigration continued; but at the same time people were moving out of the Lower East Side, so new immigrants from China took their place. In the 1980’s and 1990’s thousands of people from Fujian Province immigrated to New York and settled on the borders of what was then Chinatown along East Broadway. Today Chinatown is much larger than it was fifty years ago, and Tribeca, the financial district, the Lower East Side, and SoHo border it. However, increased development and demand for real estate are changing the dynamics and demographics of this historic immigrant enclave. In 2000 the population of Chinatown was 79.5% Asian, but in 2010 it was 74.3%. The following Manhattan Chinatown pages investigate gentrification, formal institutions, and politics in Manhattan’s Chinatown, a neighborhood that continues to evolve.
This is a map of the greater Chinatown area that we will be focusing on for this project. We decided to make the Eastern border Essex St, the Southern border East Broadway/Worth St, the Northern border Delancey St, and the Western border Lafayette St because these are the farthest locations where a visible Asian presence can still be seen as dominant in the area. Although there are Asian businesses and people living in streets beyond these borders, we felt that they represented the continually-growing area known as Chinatown and these areas have not been fully incorporated into Chinatown yet. As we go through our explorations we will keep these borders in mind and take note of any signs that Chinatown is larger/smaller than our current description.
