Recently, Scott Seligman contributed this post, about Brooklyn doctor Joseph Chak Thoms, to the Newyorkhistoryblog.org site. It’s well worth a read.
This simple 1915 building, located at 49 Mott Street in the heart of Chinatown, was constructed on the site of a notorious 19th century tenement house. Since the mid-1920s, it has been the headquarters of the Lin Sing Association (聯成公所). Founded … Continue reading
According to the website SidwaysNYC.com, “Dawn Powell, novelist and playwright; Marianne Moore, the Pulitzer prize-winning poet; Argentinean tango composer Astor Piazzolla; musician Jimi Hendrix; children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak; and Barbra Streisand all called 9th Street home at one … Continue reading
This very plain 20th century building occupies the site of an earlier structure at 4 Mott Street where Chinglun Frank William Lee (李錦綸) was born in 1884. The younger son of a Chinese immigrant father and a German American mother, … Continue reading
In 1917, New York State voters finally approved women’s suffrage, despite having rejected it in a referendum just two years earlier. The majority of the pro-suffrage votes came from New York City, where women’s suffragists ran a tremendously organized campaign … Continue reading
The two buildings sit directly across from each other on Canal Street. The first, 191 Canal, is located at the same address as the prewar tenement that once housed the Chinese Hand … Continue reading
This late 19th century tenement building in the Times Square area is today home to the Bombay Masala restaurant, which claims to be the “Oldest Indian Restaurant in U.S.A.” Is the boast justified? In a way. Bombay Masala sits on … Continue reading
This postwar junior high school sits on a site that was once home to the Great Wall Film Company, founded in 1920 by a group of Chinese students and local Chinese American businesspeople. Incensed by the racist portrayals of Chinese … Continue reading
This fairly simple turn-of-the-century walk-up building was once the home of author Younghill Kang, who most likely wrote some of his early works, including The Grass Roof and The Happy Grove, while living here. Nicknamed the “St. Mark’s Garth” for its backyard … Continue reading
This 19th century tenement building at 223-225 E 31st Street once housed New York City’s first Chinese Protestant congregation under the leadership of the Rev. Huie Kin (許芹). An immigrant from Toishan, Guangdong, he arrived in America in 1868 and … Continue reading