Although Manhattan's Chinatown bears few traces of it today, from 1950 to 2005 local elites attempted to use city planning schemes to fashion an urban space that exploited exoticized notions of the quarter and its residents. Three ultimately unsuccessful proposals exemplify these “strategic self-orientalizing” endeavors: “China Village,” a Title I urban renewal proposal (1950-1954); Chinatown Revitalization Plan, an effort to alter Chinatown's streetscapes (1975); and The Unity Arch, an ornamental gate (2002-2005). Examining these proposals revises the history of Chinatown-planning nationally while revealing a story of cold-war machinations, changing immigration patterns, and the rise of identity politics.
wcities, "Experience Asia in Manhattan," <www.wcities.en/record/,7304/33/record/html>.
2.
Kay J. Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 ( Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995), 26-28.
3.
Mae M. Ngai , "Chinese-American Culture Brokers at the World's Fairs," (paper presented at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Chicago, IL, May 2005), "Transnationalism and Transformation of the Other: Response to the Presidential Address," American Quarterly 1 (March, 2005): 59-65; Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown, 3-10, 144-58; Henry Yu , Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 107-08, 114, 116, 138-39, 151-54.
4.
A brief exception to the scholarly tendency to locate Chinatown "self-orientalization" in the first half of the twentieth century can be found in Daniel B. Abramson, Lynne Manzo, and Jeffrey Hou, "From Ethnic Enclave to Multi-Ethnic Translocal Community: Constructed Identities and Urban Design in Seattle's Chinatown-International District,"Journal of Architectural and Planning Research23 (Winter, 2006): 341-60, which acknowledges the efforts by Seattle's Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Chong Wa Chinese Benevolent association to fight a 1951 decision by the city's mayor to replace the name "Chinatown" with "International Center" to reflect the quarter's multi-ethnic character and history. According to the authors, the Chinese merchant elite perceived the "marginalization of the name `Chinatown' . . . acts as a barrier to attracting tourists."
5.
In the wake of discriminatory laws that not only effectively denied entry to Chinese immigrants after 1882 but also often barred them from certain professions, the Chinese had to develop businesses that did not cater solely to other Chinese and avoided direct competition with white businesses. Vice and tourist industries attracted a predominantly white clientele and emerged as increasingly important economic sectors of Chinatowns across North America. See Sojin Kim, "Curiously Familiar: Art and Curio Stores in Los Angeles' Chinatown,"Western Folklore2, (Winter, 1999 ): 133-34. For legal restrictions on Chinese participations in many professions in New York State-which lasted until 1940-see Bernard Wong, Chinatown: Economic Adaptation and Ethnic Identity of the Chinese, Chapter Four, ( Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2002).
6.
Mai Ngai , "San Francisco's Survivors,"The New York Times (hereafter NYT), April 18, 2006; Ivan Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940," Pacific Historical Review43 (1974): 391.
7.
NYT, April 18, 2006; Kim, "Curiously Familiar," 133-36; Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction," 391.
8.
Tongs formed in the Americas as mutual-aid societies for Chinese immigrants excluded from the more prestigious Chinese surname associations, but they quickly morphed into criminal enterprises. Their primacy in New York's Chinatown as vehicles for defending financial interests led them to become the focal points of the quarter's politics by the early twentieth century. See Peter Kwong, Chinatown, NY: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950, revised ed. ( New York: New Press, 2001), 42.
9.
S. P. R. de Rodyenko, "Some Popular Misconceptions About Our Resident Chinese," NYT, July 31, 1921; J.S. Tow, The Real Chinese In America: Being an attempt to give the General American Public a Fuller Knowledge and a Better Understanding of the Chinese People in the United States (New York: The Academy Press, 1923), 53-54; "Chinese Merchants Begin 11-Day Opening," NYT, October 1, 1921; "Chinese Begin Celebration," NYT, October 2, 1921; Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction," 392; Arthur Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither? The Chinese in New York 1800-1950 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1997), 151.
10.
Peter Kwong, The New Chinatown (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987), 25-29.
11.
"Memorandum to Commissioner Moses from Herman Stichman," June 6, 1950, box 68C3, folder 1, New York City Housing Authority (hereafter NYCHA)Papers, LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, New York; see also New York State Division of Housing, Annual Report, 1951 (Albany: State Division of Housing, 1951), 12.
12.
"New Chinatown Gains Momentum," NYT, June 10, 1950; New York State Division of Housing, Annual Report, 1951, 17, 12; Milton M. Levenson, "Plans to Rebuild Chinatown and 2 Other Slums Started," NYT, May 25, 1950; "An Oriental Look for Chinatown," NYT , June 25, 1950.
13.
For the make-up of the CCBA, see Renqiu Yu, To Save China, to Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 17; Annual Report, 1951, 9.
14.
Kwong, The New Chinatown , 100-102.
15.
Kwong, The New Chinatown, 100-105; "Chinatown Housing Study Begun for State by Locality Volunteers,"NYT, June, 10 1950.
16.
"State May Bar Slum Funds to City Over Bias," no date, folder NYSCDH 1950-December Buffalo Conference, box 9, Algernon Black Papers, The Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York; Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and the Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus, OH: University of Ohio Press, 1993), x-xviii, 122; "Moses Ridicules Chinatown Plan," NYT, June 4, 1950.
17.
Nycha, "New York City Housing Authority, Routing Slip," May 31, 1950; "Memorandum Suggesting Policy of the City of New York on Proposed Slum Clearance by Private Investment Using State Low Rent Housing Funds for Capital Subsidies," July 14, 1950, box 68C3, folder 1, NYCHA Papers.
18.
"Stichman Retorts to Gibes by Moses,"NYT, 7 June 1950; State Housing Commissioner Herman T. Stichman to Robert Moses City Construction Coordinator, June 6, 1950 , folder 1, box 68C3, NYCHA Papers.
19.
"Stichman Seeks President's Help," NYT, July 11, 1950; "New Chinatown Gains Momentum," NYT, July 10, 1950.
20.
"U.S. Agency Agrees to Consider Chinatown Plan if City Asks Aid," NYT, August 8, 1950; " Chinatown Aglow for Business Fete," NYT, November 7, 1950.
21.
CCBA stressed to The New York Times, "in conformance with the project of . . . Commissioner Stichman to transform Chinatown into a modern `Chinese Village,'" in NYT, November 7, 1950 .
22.
"West Joins East for Lee Funeral," NYT, March 21, 1955; Charles Hiroshi Garrett, "Chinatown, Whose Chinatown? Defining America's Borders with Musical Orientalism," Journal of the American Musicological Society (Spring, 2004 ): 119-74.
23.
"Culture of Old Cathay Lives Anew In Hearts of Chinatown's Children,"NYT, January 29, 1951.
24.
"83 Chinese Aliens Arrested in Raids," NYT , February 1, 1951; Mai M. Ngai, "The Politics of Immigration: The Cold War, McCarthyism, and the Chinese in America," (Master's thesis, Columbia University, 1993).
25.
Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves, 187; see also Kwong, The New Chinatown, 105-6; Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects , 213; Edward Ranzal, "Red Extortion Is Laid To Chinese Daily Here," NYT, April 29, 1952.
26.
Anthony Jackson , A Place Called Home: The History of Low-Cost Housing in Manhattan (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1976), 250; Richard M. Flanagan, "The Housing Act of 1954: The Sea Change in National Urban Policy," Urban Affairs Review2 (November, 1997): 275; Robert Moses, Chairman Committee on Slum Clearance to Philip J. Cruise, Chairman NYCHA, April 7, 1954, box 68C3, folder 4, NYCHA Papers.
27.
"Chinatown Plan Moves Forward," NYT, December 30, 1954; Robert A. M. Stern, New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial (New York: Monticello Press, 1995), 150-54.
28.
Robert Moses , Chairman City Construction Coordinator to Rev. Louis Bucheimer, January 4, 1955, box 68C3, folder 4, NYCHA Papers.
29.
Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Random House , 1974), 965-79; Schwartz , The New York Approach, 170-203; NYT, February 27, 1951; Moses to Bucheimer, NYCHA Papers; Meyer Berger, "About New York: Alarm Fills the Hearts of Chinatown's Elders as they Hearken to the Wind in the Grass,"NYT, January 3, 1955; "On a Sunday in Chinatown," NYT, February 27, 1955.
30.
"Housing Project Voted," NYT, March 11, 1955; "Mr. Stichman and Housing," NYT, January 4, 1955; "Slum to be Razed Near Chatham Sq," NYT, October 15, 1956; "You'll Walk to Work from Chatham Green," advertising pamphlet for Chatham Green, NYCHA Papers, box 73B4, folder 5; Stern, New York1960, 150-54.
31.
"Chinatown to See Movies in Pagoda" NYT, May 29, 1964.
32.
Kwong, The New Chinatown, 29-33; Chinatown Study Group, Chinatown Report: 1969 (New York: New York East Asian Institute , 1969), 51.
33.
Chinatown Study Group, Chinatown Report: 1969, 39; Jan Lin, Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclave, Global Change (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 121-46.
34.
"Chinese Civic Association Protests Chinatown Film," NYT, September 12, 1964; Ivan Light, Charles Choy Wong, "Protest or Work: Dilemmas of the Tourist Industry in American Chinatowns," The American Journal of Sociology6 (May, 1975): 1360-61.
35.
Chinatown Report: 1969, 56; Light and Wong, "Protest or Work," 1355.
36.
Robert Hart, Adam Krivatsy, William Stubee, Chinatown New York: A Report on the Conditions and Needs of a Unique Community (New York: Department of City Planning , 1968), 4.
37.
Kwong,The New Chinatown , 38; Hart, Krivatsy, Stubee, Chinatown New York, 26, 53-54.
38.
"Mickey Mouse Teaches the Architects," NYT, September 22, 1972. The firm would later develop plans to transform an upstate New York town into a seventeenth-century fantasyland, complete with "sound-and-light shows, [and] a costumed Robin Hood." See "Sparks Fly in Catskills Over Fantasyland Plan," NYT, April 3, 1989.
39.
"Chinatown Panel Asks Poverty Aid," NYT, October 15, 1969.
40.
"A Gain in Tourism Predicted by City," NYT, April 19, 1974.
41.
Michael Sterne , "New York Urged to Stress Tourism," NYT, May 5, 1977.
42.
New York Department of City Planning, Chinatown Street Revitalization (New York: Department of City Planning, 1975), 2-7, 35-40.
43.
Ibid., 34, 35, 39, 40.
44.
Glenn Fowler , "Planning Department Proposes a "Revitalization' of Chinatown," NYT, August 18, 1976; Kwong, The New Chinatown, 55.
45.
"Selling New York as the Place to Be," NYT , June 28, 1977; "New York Sees Record Tourism ," NYT, May 12, 1977; "Occupancy in Hotels is Running at 90%," NYT, November 14, 1978; "State Reports $400 Million Rise in Tourism Since Promotion, NYT, January 17, 1979; "1979 is Reported a Record Year for Tourism in New York City," NYT, 27 December 1979; Asian American Federation , Chinatown One Year After September 11th: An Economic Impact Study, <www.affny.org/research/OneYearAfter/ChinatownOneYearAfter.pdf> ; (November, 2002): 13.
46.
For the rise of identity politics in Chinatown, see Lin , Reconstructing Chinatown, 127-29 and Kwong, The New Chinatown, 124-36; Although Chung published in the 1970s in the journals Bridge and Ikon, her "Ladies and Gentlemen" appears in the posthumous collection Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple: The Poems of Frances Chung ( Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 7. But, as the collection's editor, Walter Lew notes, this poem was probably written in 1977. See Chung, Crazy Melon, 149.
47.
"So Long, It's Been Good Pagoda," Village Voice, September 5, 1995. At the time that Matsuda spoke to the Voice, MoCA's name was The Chinatown Museum, but it would acquire its current name later that year.
48.
Asian American Federation of New York, Chinatown One Year After September 11th: An Economic Impact Study, 9.
49.
Ibid., 34, 35.
50.
York K.Chang, President CCBA to Michael Bloomberg, June 30, 2005, in authors' possession.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Chinatown Ymca , "RCI `SWOT' Workshop," < www.rebuildchinatown.org/doc/TranscriptWorkshop1.pdg> (February 27, 2003); "RCI Topical Workshop #1: Transportation," <www.rebuildchinatown.org/doc/Transcript_Revised.pdf> ; (March 27, 2003); Tin Din Ng, "Ground One: Interview with Tin Din Ng by Florence Ng, Voices From Post-9/11 Chinatown," <http://www.911da.org/chinatown> no date.
53.
Gary Tai , "Oral History Interview with Nancy Yang," August 9, 2006, transcript and tape in authors' possession.
54.
Han Meyer , City and Port: The Transformation of the Port Cities: London, Barcelona, New York and Rotterdam (Amsterdam : International Books, 2003), 47.
55.
The growing literature on place attachment is well surveyed in Irwin Altman, Seth Low, eds., Place Attachment: Human Behavior and Environment (New York : Plenum Press, 1992); Lynne C. Manzo, Douglas D. Perkins, "Finding Common Ground: The Importance of Place Attachment to Community Participation and Planning," Journal of Planning Literature20 (2006): 335-50.
56.
A discussion of how neighborhoods have resisted growth coalition commodification of a neighborhood through community identity can be found in D. Wilson, J. Wouters, D. Grammenos, "Successful Protect-Community Discourse: Spatiality and Politics in Chicago's Pilsen Neighborhood," Environment and PlanningA36 (2004): 1173-90.
57.
Mark Abrahamson , Urban Enclaves: Identity and Place in America (New York: St. Martin Press, 1996), 7.
