Chinatown & Little Italy
National Register Historic District
Architectural Historian
Two Bridges Neighborhood Council
NEW YORK, NY
2009
The Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District is nationally significant under Criterion A in the areas of Chinese-American and Italian-American ethnic heritage and social history, particularly in association with the history of immigration in America. Immigration, and the resulting diversity of cultural influences, has been – and remains – one of the central themes of American history and a key factor in defining an American identity. The district is the setting in which the immigrant experience has occurred and continues to occur to the present day. The district’s period of significance, c. 1800 to 1965, incorporates the historical and architectural evolution of the neighborhood and its development into a vibrant immigrant community. The historical significance of the district is enhanced by the high potential for intact late eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth century archaeological deposits in the rear yards of the district’s old town houses and tenements, and in and around the vicinity of Columbus Park, the former location of early industry and the infamous Mulberry Bend slum.
The district meets Criterion D for its potential to yield important information about housing, commerce, industry, health and sanitation, ethnicity, wealth, religion, and recreation of the inhabitants of the area during the period of significance. It is also nationally significant under Criterion C for architecture, particularly for its numerous tenements which reflect the evolution of housing reform laws of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries. The tenement is a distinct housing type associated with a way of life that is significant in American urban history. The tenements of Chinatown and Little Italy, like those elsewhere in the Lower East Side, housed immigrants to New York during the greatest wave of immigration in American history (1880 to 1921). The tenement buildings also reflect the importance of commerce to this densely populated area, since most have shops or restaurants at the ground floor. In addition, the Italian and Chinese identity of the district is also evident in some of the alterations made to existing buildings that housed churches, clubs, and other organizations and businesses central to these communities.
The Chinatown and Little Italy neighborhoods in Manhattan were forged in same dynamic period of American history, the mid nineteenth through early twentieth century; a time when waves of immigrants from all corners of the world came to New York seeking opportunity. New York City and, in particular, the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Little Italy, and the Lower East Side, are significant within the history of immigration because the scale of the phenomenon as it occurred there, far outweighed that in any other city in the United State Services included primary and secondary research for over 700 buildings and sites.
Award
New York State Historic Preservation Award, Outstanding National Register Nomination, 2010
