Throughout June, we will be highlighting neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia, the people and places that make our city unique and strong. By the close of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia was recognized as both the "Workshop of the World" and a "City of Neighborhoods." Since that time, waves of economic and social change have continually re-shaped the city into the metropolis we know today. We look forward to sharing the backstory of several of our city's neighborhoods in the weeks ahead.
Chinatown
Approximately Arch to Spring Garden Streets, 8th to 13th Streets
With a history that dates back to 1870, Chinatown is one of Philadelphia’s oldest and most vibrant neighborhoods. For many decades Chinatown consisted of a concentration of Chinese businesses clustered around the 900 block of Race Street. These predominantly male-populated clusters were called “Bachelor Societies” and were formed in many of the east coast cities.

After World War II, liberalized immigration policies toward the Chinese transformed Chinatown into a family-oriented community. Churches, businesses, social, and cultural organizations were established to improve neighborhood life, preserve Chinese culture, and provide services to growing numbers of new residents.
Located in Center City and next to central public transportation lines, Chinatown has prospered and grown into a vital economic and cultural hub for Philadelphia. Chinatown’s restaurants, stores, churches, and cultural attractions have made the neighborhood a bustling center for commerce and tourism.

While Chinatown has grown as an economic hub for the City, the neighborhood has continued to serve as a vital gateway for new immigrants and an important cultural center for the Asian American community.

Yet, Chinatown is also a community divided in half. The Vine Street Expressway, a massive six-lane highway, runs through the heart of the neighborhood, effectively cutting the northern part of the neighborhood off from the south. These two sides differ greatly, with each harboring its own unique set of challenges and opportunities.
On October 8, 2010, the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission dedicated a historic plaque at 913 Race Street recognizing the founding of Chinatown. Placed at 913 Race Street, the plaque marks the place of the laundry owned by Lee Fong. Lee Fong was one of the many sojourners who fled anti-Chinese sentiment in the west and relocated east, and the business he established at this site is considered the birth of the neighborhood. Other notable properties in the neighborhood include the former Chinatown YMCA/Chinese Cultural and Community Center (125 N. 10th St), added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in 2013 and the Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church and School (915 Vine St), which parishioners and allies successfully rallied to save amid the development of the Expressway and other impending projects.
These neighborhood descriptions are not meant to represent the comprehensive story of these neighborhoods and places. They are more so vignettes, intended to highlight and recognize the varied places across Philadelphia that contribute to our shared built environment. The places which have been intentionally or unintentionally preserved in the past and which deserve further preservation today.

Some additional sources of Chinatown history:



NEW VIRTUAL LECTURES
Watch from the safety and
comfort of your own home! 
Tuesday, June 16, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Truth, Fire, and Frank Furness
Presented by Michael Lewis, author of Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind and Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History at Williams College.

Frank Furness never wrote a single word of theory and yet his buildings brim with ideas. Drawing on contemporary interviews with Furness, this talk reconstructs the architectural philosophy behind his aggressive banks, libraries, and train stations. It proposes that Philadelphia’s beloved rogue architect, notorious for his profanity and for shooting his revolver in the office, was actually a closet intellectual.
Tuesday, June 23, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
The part and the whole: Wilson Eyre and a quiet architectural revolution in 1880s Philadelphia
Presented by Jeffrey Cohen, Professor of the History of Architecture and the Urban Form in the Growth & Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College.

The heroically inventive work of the 1870s, led in Philadelphia by Frank Furness and George Hewitt, Henry Sims, and Willis Hale, ran headlong into a different regime of design values toward that decade’s close. Virtues suddenly became vices, and the expressed material and spatial truths of the part yielded to a stronger emphasis on visual harmony in the whole. This was especially evident in buildings by a younger generation of architects working in what was nominally a wide array of styles. Notable among this group were Wilson Eyre, Frank Miles Day, the firm of Cope & Stewardson, and others who followed their lead into the mid-1890s. Join us for an exploration of their work.
TICKETS COMING SOON

Sally Elk - Eastern State Penitentiary
Tuesday, June 30, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM