Hey, there! Log in / Register
How Chinatown became Chinatown
By adamg on Tue, 07/05/2011 - 9:43am
The Chinatown Blog recounts the neighborhood's history, starting in the 1830s, when a tidal marsh was filled in for a mixed-use development that included rail yards and residential buildings.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
The labor connection
The first Chinese immigrants came to Chinatown around 1870 to work at a shoe factory in North Adams. Original newspaper articles about the community are in the first three results on this page:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=factory+sho...
North Adams?
No way would anyone commute from Boston's Chinatown to work at a North Adams factory. Even in 2011 that's a long trip.
I suspect ...
Most of the immigrants got off a boat or a train in Boston, then took a train out to North Adams to live, but that some of them stayed near the train station. It's the same basic pattern that explains why the North End was an immigrant neighborhood for so long - some people didn't go more than a couple of blocks after that long journey from overseas.