5 minute read
Boston Chinatown: Preserving Historic Character Through Cultural Placekeeping
by LYDIA LOWE AND DAPHNE XU
Lydia Lowe is the executive director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust and the mother of two daughters who are sixth generation Chinese Americans. Daphne Xu is an artist/ filmmaker and cultural placekeeping consultant leading the Immigrant History Trail project.
The Chinatown Community Land Trust has unwittingly become a new voice in the preservation arena. We work for community control of land, development without displacement, shared neighborhood spaces, and collective governance. But as we seek to strengthen the future of Chinatown, we must answer the question of what makes Chinatown Chinatown?
We are weaving together many strands of activism–historic and affordable housing preservation, policy and zoning reform, an approach to socially engaged art that we call cultural placekeeping, and Chinatown’s designation as both a cultural and historic district.
What Is Historic Preservation?
Despite perceptions of the Chinese as newcomers, Boston Chinatown has more than 150 years of history with roots as a safe haven for immigrant laborers fleeing eastward in response to racial violence and exclusionary laws. Chinatown was built on the tidal flats reclaimed by the South Cove Company in the 1830s and next to a railyard that brought in new industries and immigrant workers from Ireland, Europe, and the Middle East. Today, this once undesirable neighborhood commands some of the hottest real estate values in Massachusetts with gentrification threatening Chinatown’s future.
At the Chinatown Community Land Trust, we don’t think of ourselves as historic preservationists so much as we consider ourselves activists who are trying to protect our community from urban renewal, highway construction, institutional expansion, or luxury development. We increasingly find ourselves allied with the preservation community as we define what we are trying to preserve.
We previously thought of historic preservation as a focus on landmark architecture and beautiful old buildings. Chinatown’s old buildings are mostly unglamorous, tenement-style row houses built for laborers and their families. Yet if you walk down the remaining row house streets you will feel there is something that we don’t want to lose.
If you go to Chinatown in Washington, DC, you encounter an ornate Chinese gate and franchise businesses boasting both English and Chinese names. What you won’t see are very many Chinese people and small businesses. This begs the question: Do Chinese cultural symbols—pagoda-style roofs, lanterns, stone lions—make a Chinatown? Community activists in Boston Chinatown are preserving the historic character of our community historic buildings, legacy businesses, small streetscapes, and some cultural icons. But it is so much more.
How Do You Preserve Historic Character?
Preservation of historic character begins with defining that character. When we look at the history of Chinatown and the South Cove neighborhood, its culture and character stem from its role as a neighborhood for immigrant, working-class families since the 1830s. This neighborhood was home to successive waves of Irish, Eastern European, Syrian, and Chinese immigrant laborers.
We cannot preserve this character without preserving the stories and maintaining the ongoing presence of the immigrants and small business entrepreneurs. That is why we work to preserve the Greek Revival and Federal Style brick buildings as permanently affordable homes for modest-income families and legacy mom-and-pop businesses. Equally important is the development of new affordable housing.
Within Chinatown’s small-scale streets, row houses on Oxford Place and Johnny Court are reminders of the past and spaces for growing a new sense of community and stewardship. The annual Chinatown Block Party is a celebration for Chinatown residents to become reacquainted, unlike the festivals focused on attracting visitors to Chinatown’s commercial streets.
Cultural Placekeeping
In Chinatown, community organizations use the term “placekeeping” instead of “placemaking.” While placemaking often supports gentrification, our intention is to counter development pressures. We facilitate cultural programming, community-led urban design, and planning interventions to maintain Chinatown’s cultural identity and role as a working-class immigrant hub. Cultural placekeeping creates opportunities to appreciate and promote conversations about Chinatown’s immigrant, working-class history and future. Past and current residents, small business owners, and those who work in Chinatown can all take part in shaping narratives and see themselves represented in the story.
We have engaged local artists, designers, researchers, writers, and historians to collaborate on projects such as the Immigrant History Trail. We hope to activate Chinatown’s many existing archives to engage various publics in person and online. Preserving Chinatown’s character will take the weaving together of many strategies. Binding it all is the community organizing necessary to grow each strand, and the people for whom Chinatown is home, livelihood, and identity. We hope that the strength of binding these interwoven strategies together will pull us into the future.
