City Hall Park, November 24, 2021. NYC Municipal Archives.
Happy Thanksgiving Day! Enjoy the weekend and the brilliant autumn foliage now at its peak in many city parks.
“Chinese Buildings” in Chinatown
Walking around New York’s Chinatown today, you might not notice a lot of Chinese architectural characteristics. While Chinatowns like San Francisco and Los Angeles intentionally incorporated elaborate and colorful Chinese-roofed buildings and the signature Chinatown Gate as marketing tools, New York’s Chinatown lacks the same overt Orientalized character.
Though New York’s Chinatown doesn't fit the visual stereotype of a Chinatown, closer inspection reveals subtle architectural links to China. Through the resources of the Municipal Archives, it is possible to look back in time to the early decades of Chinatown to find even stronger architectural connections.
Image 1. Chinatown. Detail from the Bromley Atlas, Plate 5. 1897.
Located just a block from the notorious Five Points, lower Mott Street, Pell and Doyers Streets were home to successive waves of Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrant residents. As a predominantly Chinese residential and business district began to coalesce into Chinatown in the late 1870s and 1880s, Chinese moved into the same old townhouses and tenements that had stood in the neighborhood for decades: Two to five-story buildings no different from the tenements found throughout the Lower East Side. With Chinatown’s population and economy expanding, the Chinese began to adapt these pre-existing buildings for their specific use and taste: Dry goods and grocery stores, import/export businesses, restaurants, boarding houses and family, merchant and district associations.
With no Chinese architects to turn to, Euro-American architects were hired to transform Chinese-owned or leased buildings along lower Mott, Pell and Doyers Street into versions of a building type more useful and familiar to the Chinese: The tong lau (唐樓). Though tong lau translates from Cantonese as “Chinese building”, the building type is a hybrid of many influences, among them Indian verandas brought by English colonizers to Hong Kong, and the southern Chinese shophouse, a mixed-use urban multifamily building. During the nineteenth century, the shophouse typology, of which the tong lau is an example, proliferated in areas of Chinese urban settlement the Pearl River Delta, its port city, Guangzhou, and colonial Hong Kong, the sources of most Chinese immigration to the United States in this period. Shophouse variants are found in Chinese settlements worldwide.
The character-defining features of the exterior of the tong lau are its deep, covered verandas or galleries — essentially covered porches extending across the facade that expanded usable living space in a hot, rainy climate and brought light and air into the often overpopulated building. Architect John A. Hamilton who completed a number of commissions for Chinese clients in New York Chinatown described the gallery as “essentially a chinese [sic] device and desired by them as being more like the stores in CHINA…” (Hamilton to Constable, BBL Folders Block 162, Lot 15). (Image 2.)
Image 2. Architect John A. Hamilton, who completed a number of commissions for Chinese clients, made a case for a gallery as a “chinese device” at 28 Mott Street. It was only approved once he redesigned it entirely of iron. Hamilton to Department of Building Superintendent Constable, August 3, 1895. Manhattan Department of Buildings Block & Lot Folder Collection, Block 162, Lot 15. NYC Municipal Archives.
The Chinese arrived in New York in the mid-nineteenth century, at a time when building codes were changing. After an untold number of deadly building fires, fire escapes for tenements only began to be required in 1860. The utilitarian nature of the fire escape was feared to mar the architectural character of buildings, opening up an opportunity for engineers, fabricators and others to design architecturally pleasing fire escapes. From the 1860s through the 1880s, patented designs often took the form of ornate wrought iron balconies spanning one or two windows connected by ladders or stairs to the street.[1] When designs for wooden galleries were deemed unlawful, Hamilton and his fellow Chinatown architects instead adapted the legally-required fire escape into galleries. (Image 3.)
Image 3. Fire escapes adapted into tong lau-style galleries were once a common feature of Chinatown. Friends of China parade along lower Mott Street in 1937. No.s16-20 Mott Street were among the earliest buildings to be retrofitted with galleries. WPA Federal Writers’ Project Photograph Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
The buildings most commonly transformed into the tong lau type were those occupied by family, regional, fraternal and merchant or business associations. These organizations emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to provide mutual aid to Chinese in the US through economic, social and cultural support. Each association was organized according to affiliation, either surname (family); place of origin (district or regional), political or cultural (fraternal); or business ties (merchant). In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, after which most Chinese, except for the merchant class, were categorically denied the right to immigrate or become naturalized American citizens, these associations played an important role in defending the rights and dignity of the Chinese in the United States.
The typical organization of a New York tenement included a store on the first floor with apartments above. Reflecting the economic and social organization of Chinatown, a tenement owned by an association might include a store on the first floor, restaurant or association meeting space on the second with a full-width, roofed gallery; housing on floors three and four; and an association meeting space on the fifth or top floor, also with gallery. A two or three-story building might have galleries on all upper floors (Image 3). The Municipal Archives collection of Department of Buildings architectural drawings and plans for Lower Manhattan, circa 1866-1978, contains drawings of merchant, district and family associations buildings that illustrate how elements of the tong lau manifested in both new construction and retrofitted buildings.
Since its founding in the 1890s, the On Leong Tong, later known as the Chinese Merchants Association, was one of the most powerful associations in Chinatown. By 1919, its members from chapters all across the United States had raised $70,000 to build their new clubhouse at 41 Mott Street. Architect Richard Rahmann of the firm William H. Rahmann & Sons designed a richly-detailed six-story building, with inset galleries at the second and sixth floor (Image 4). It included a restaurant for the public at the ground floor, dining facilities for club members at the second and third floor, sleeping accommodations for members on floors four and five, and a meeting room and library at the top floor. It was the first entirely new construction for a Chinatown association to incorporate both elements of the tong lau and a Chinese-inspired roof. Less than a decade later, architects Cohen & Siegel reworked the pagoda-like polygonal roof at the sixth floor into a highly-ornamented squared off “marquise” that would expand the usable space for the association’s top-floor meeting spaces (Images 5 and 6).
Now home to the Lee Family Association, 41 Mott Street was totally remodeled in the 1970s, and all exterior traces of Chinatown’s first “Chinese building” have been lost.
Image 4. Plans for the new On Leong Chinese Merchant’s Association, with galleries on the second and sixth floor, were filed by William H. Rahmann & Sons architects in 1919, but the building was not completed until October 1921. Manhattan Department of Buildings Plan Collection, Block 201, Lot 7. NYC Municipal Archives.
Image 5. Architects Cohen & Siegel reworked the Chinese Merchants Association’s sixth-floor gallery to create more space for association functions. The new design was richly detailed in copper. Manhattan Department of Buildings Plan Collection, Block 201, Lot 7. NYC Municipal Archives.
Image 6. When it opened in 1921, the Chinese Merchants Association was the most elaborate new building in Chinatown, with tong lau-style galleries at the second and sixth floor. The sixth floor was reworked in 1929, as shown in this WPA photo from the mid to late 1930s. WPA Federal Writers’ Project Photograph Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Founded in 1900, the Lin Sing is a district or regional association composed of 18 smaller organizations with a mission of advocating for the rights of its members. In 1926, the Lin Sing Association turned to architect Charles S. Clark to design their new six-story building at 47-49 Mott Street (New Building Application no. 400 of 1926; Image 7). This was the second brand new building in Chinatown based on the tong lau. Unlike the adapted tenements with their applied wrought iron fire escape galleries, this large new golden brick building, which occupies two lots, incorporated a recessed gallery spanning the second floor, where the association’s meeting space was (and still is) located. In an approximation of a Chinese roof, Clark designed a modestly curved green tiled rooflet over the gallery and another at the cornice (since removed). Prominent flagpoles featured on many Chinese-owned or leased buildings, and often flying the flags of the Republic of China (now Taiwan) and the United States. In Clark’s architectural drawing, the flagpole flies an American flag.
Image 7. The Lin Sing Associations’ new building golden brick building at 47-49 Mott (New Building application no. 400 of 1926) was the second purpose-built association in Chinatown to incorporate ta tong lau-style gallery into the second floor. Though specified in this drawing as copper, the modest Chinese-inspired roofs were clad in green tiles. Manhattan Department of Buildings Plan Collection, Block 201, Lot 7. NYC Municipal Archives.
The only drawing in the Department of Buildings collection that illustrates the adapted fire escape is surprisingly not from the turn of the twentieth century, but from 1946. (Image 8.) The Soo Yuen Association, representing families with the surname Lei, Fang and Kwang/Kuang, hired architect Irving Fiertag and his associate Foo F. Louis to create a metal-roofed gallery across at the top floor of their tenement building at 68 Mott. Still in place today, the metal brackets decoratively supporting the roof are based on traditional Chinese timber brackets called dougong.
Image 8. The Soo Yuen family association’s new fifth-floor gallery from 1946 took the form of the old-style fire escape adaptations popular at the turn of the century. Manhattan Department of Buildings Plan Collection, Block 201, Lot 3. NYC Municipal Archives.
Whether for observing Chinese New Year festivities, parades, or daily life in Chinatown, “chinese devices” like galleries offered both functional and familiar space in a cramped urban environment. Though most of Chinatown’s tong lau-style galleries are gone or altered, evidence from the Municipal Archives helps piece together a story of an immigrant community maintaining strong ties to China and among fellow Chinese.
Kerri Culhane is an architectural historian and planner. In 2019, she co-curated The Lung Block exhibition at the Municipal Archives. She is a PhD candidate in Architecture & Urban History at the Bartlett, University College London, where her research explores architectural change in New York's Chinatown from the 1870s to 1965.
[1] Originally under the purview of the Board of Health, and later the fire department, by 1892, all new fire escapes came under the review of the Superintendent of Buildings. Mary Elizabeth André, “Fire Escapes in Urban America: History and Preservation.” MA Thesis, University of Vermont, 2006, 27; 88-100.
Launching ArchivesSpace
On October 25, 2021, the New York City Municipal Archives launched ArchivesSpace, a web-based tool that enables researchers to easily identify records pertaining to people, places, and subjects in the collections. Put succinctly, this is a very big deal!
Opening Page. Municipal Archives Collection Guides. NYC Municipal Archives.
The Municipal Archives has been described as one of the largest repositories of government records in North America. The world-class collections span four centuries and include historical records of all three branches of municipal government—executive, legislative, and judicial. The Municipal Archives holdings total more than 185,000 cubic feet and 350 terabytes of historical City records, photographs, and recordings. That’s the good news. The on-going challenge is how to provide various levels of access to help patrons know what exists in the collections and identify materials relevant for their research. ArchivesSpace takes us a long-way toward meeting that challenge.
Before implementation of this tool, patrons needed to know, or guess, which collections might contain material relevant to their research. Then, it would be necessary to examine available inventories, etc., individually. Even with Archives staff assistance, it was not always possible to identify every collection that might be pertinent.
Now, users can search and browse descriptions of the archival holdings using a variety of parameters—keyword, creator agency, subject and name. Search results will also indicate when digitized material is available in the online gallery.
Launching ArchivesSpace didn’t take quite the resources needed for a moon landing, but at times, it felt like it. To make it work, we had to gain intellectual and physical control over the collections, establish record groups, clean up legacy data, and identify record creators and their functional relationships to one another. Essentially, we had to remediate and standardize vast quantities of metadata—an immense task given size and complexity of the collections.
Illustration - Collection Data Sources. NYC Municipal Archives.
City archivists have been describing municipal government records since the establishment of the Municipal Archives in 1952. There are more than 3,800 appraisal and accession reports, plus thousands of inventories, indexes and finding aids in many formats—paper, Excel, Access and pdf. Often there are multiple versions describing a collection.
We began the work in 2014. First, we assembled all 3,812 accession records. They were very useful, of course, but we discovered that over the 70+years of their creation, consistent descriptive standards had not been used. Here’s an example: “Parks Department” is listed on a 2010 accession. Unfortunately, “Parks Department” is not the name of the agency, past or present. Depending on the time period, the creating agency could have been:
• Board of the Commissioners of the Central Park (1857-1870)
• Department of Public Parks (1870-1898)
• Department of Parks (1898-1968)
• Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs (1968-1976)
• Department of Parks and Recreation (1976-present).
There were incomplete appraisal and accession records for some of the holdings, particularly those dating from lean budget years when there was only enough Archives staff to bring important records into the building, but not to describe or inventory the material.
We also found that names of city officials and their titles had been spelled and listed in a myriad of ways. For example, is it Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia or Mayor Fiorello La Guardia? In total there are more than 1,800 “agents” in the collection, i.e. people, places, entities, etc. Only 900 had Library of Congress-established designations—the rest we had to create.
An indispensable resource: The Guide to the Municipal Government of the City of New York, by Thelma E. Smith, 1960. NYC Municipal Library
We had to develop an ontology, i.e. figure out who are the record creators and what is their relationship to one another. Researching and creating these agency histories proved to be one of the most time-consuming but important tasks we accomplished.
Illustration: Sample Record Group: Commission on Human Rights. NYC Municipal Archives
We also created record groups. They are the “buckets” to index functionality, not the records themselves. We decided to use the current agencies as the record groups; they are like umbrellas with the names of all the other related agencies listed underneath them. For example, if a researcher does not know that there was a previous iteration of the agency with a different title, they can search in the tool to learn all the other associated and predecessor entities, and relevant holdings in the Archives.
The ultimate goal of implementing ArchivesSpace is to make the entirety of the collections open and accessible to researchers. It also serves as a tool for Archives staff to manage the material. It is worth noting that in some ways the pandemic and resulting closure of the Municipal Archives offices helped speed up the implementation. Much of the work that was required to make ArchivesSpace a reality was suitable for staff working remotely.
In launching ArchivesSpace, Municipal Archives Director Sylvia Kollar said: “The Archives has reimagined ways in which we provide access to the City's historical records. The site enables researchers to understand the constant evolution of City government agencies, and reflects the Archives’ role in providing intellectual access points to a dynamic, ever- growing collection.”
Take a moment to explore our NYCMA Collection Guides. We look forward to helping explore the wide range of New York City government collections.
Users can submit research requests directly to Municipal Archives reference staff using the Contact Us tab or email research@records.nyc.gov.
Alexandra Hilton is Head of Collections Management at the Municipal Archives. She joined the Archives 2012 and has been working on ArchivesSpace since 2014.
Municipal Archives Opens New Facility in Industry City, Brooklyn
On October 25, 2021, Commissioner Pauline Toole and Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the new Municipal Archives storage and research facility at Industry City. In a press releases announcing the opening, Mayor de Blasio said “This state-of-the-art storage and research facility will ensure preservation of the City’s heritage for generations to come. The $22 million facility is the city’s most significant investment in its Archives since establishment of the Department of Records & Information Services in 1977.”
This milestone accomplishment was only possible thanks to the many archives staff who contributed their expertise, creativity, and strength (mental, physical and emotional!) over the last six-plus years. The comments from several of the staff recorded in this blog attest to the significance of the new facility.
Commissioner Pauline Toole and Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball cut the ribbon to open the new Municipal Archives storage and research facility at Industry City, Brooklyn, October 25, 2021. Photographer: Aburaihan Rahman. NYC Municipal Archives.
Visitors at the opening ceremony toured the exhibition area in the new facility, October 25, 2021. Photographer: Aburaihan Rahman. NYC Municipal Archives.
Municipal Archives Director Sylvia Kollar commented on some of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ tasks that were an important part of the move. “A multi-year collections survey detailed what collections we formally accessioned, those that still require review and assessment, and a more accurate extent of the collections. A preservation survey detailed the collection conditions and will inform conservation, preservation, and processing priorities well into the future. Mapping collections to custom shelving provided an opportunity for better organization and accessibility. In addition to the improved physical conditions, managing data associated with over 300,000 unique items in a machine-readable format is among the most important results of the move. It will dramatically improve our ability to manage and provide access to the collections, and consequently our continued efforts to improve our digital presence.
While the focus has typically been on the collections, the Archives and Records Management staff deserve a remarkable tribute acknowledging their tenacity and skills- they are truly unmatched.”
Municipal Archives Reading Room, Industry City, October 2021. Photographer: Michael Lorenzini. NYC Municipal Archives.
The new facility includes space for patrons to conduct research using the materials stored in Brooklyn. Patrons make appointments and go directly to Industry City. This makes the retrieval process more efficient and environmentally friendly and researchers no longer need to wait for the weekly transfer of material from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The Municipal Archives’ headquarters at 31 Chambers Street in Manhattan will continue to welcome patrons researching collections stored in Manhattan and serve as a venue for exhibitions and public programs.
Reference Archivist Katie Ehrlich commented on the reading room: “It’s exciting to see researchers’ reactions to the new Industry City space. They are happy to do research in a new facility and be some of the first ones through our doors. They all comment about the view of New York Harbor, but also appreciate that they can access the collections. It’s nice to provide patrons with a new experience. It’s amazing that every box has its rightful place, to be able to look up the location at information and then discover collections and material I've never seen before. The collections here are just so vast.”
View from the Reading Room, Municipal Archives, Industry City, October 25, 2021. Photographer: Aburaihan Rahman. NYC Municipal Archives.
Movable shelving greatly increased the storage capacity of the new space. There are more than 90,000 linear feet of storage space—the equivalent of about 21 football fields in length. Photographer: Aburaihan Rahman. NYC Municipal Archives.
Appraisals and Accessions Archivist Todd Gilbert remarked: “The Municipal Archives’ new facility is an inspiring advance for the care our collections receive and the institution's ability to manage and make them available to the public. It’s a great feeling to move a shelving carriage the size of subway car at the touch of a button and realize our collections are in a better preservation environment than ever, while occupying a smaller physical footprint. And it’s especially exciting that this coincides with a massive leap in accessibility as comprehensive descriptions of our holdings are made publicly available online. The foundation that’s been laid for the Archives to keep striving towards its mission of preserving and making the records of the City government available is a really meaningful achievement.”
Special shelving holds rolled architectural plans. The facility also includes cold storage vaults for photographic negatives, sound, film and video recordings, and map cabinets for oversize flat materials. The facility contains space for every task required to process and preserve collections. There is a digital lab, a collections processing area, and a conservation lab. The elevators are sealed to prevent dust and drafts during the transfer process.
Lindsey Hobbs, Head of Conservation, Preservation, described the HVAC system: “In addition to providing a well-equipped workspace for researchers, the Archives’ new facility also features state-of-the-art storage environments for collection materials. Occupying the upper levels of the building, the HVAC system maintains multiple tiers of environmental controls to support the preservation of a variety of media types, including film, objects, photographic materials, as well as books and paper. Controlled temperature and humidity tailored to specific material types slows the natural aging of collections, thus better preserving New York City’s heritage for future generations.
Staff from all Divisions of DORIS contributed to making the move to the new facility a success. Jerrold Farrington from the Records Management Division spoke for many of his colleagues: “It was a pleasure to help set up and move Archives into their new space. The new space will be beneficial to the growth of Archives as time goes on. All of us in Records Management congratulates Archives in their new space.”
Visitor Entrance, Municipal Archives Storage and Research Facility, Industry City, Brooklyn, October 2021. Photographer: Michael Lorenzini. NYC Municipal Archives.
In 2014, with support and funding from the de Blasio administration, the Design and Project Management Unit at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services began searching for new space and developing layouts for a state-of-the-art research and storage facility. The neighboring warehouse at Industry City, which also houses the active records storage space, proved ideal. Design of the appropriate heating and humidification zones was complicated and the construction was slowed due to the pandemic. But, the new facility at Industry City is now a reality. The collections have been moved, staff is on premises and researchers have arrived. We look forward to working with community residents to add their stories to the Neighborhood Stories project and increasing access to City government’s historical records in this beautiful new space.