Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District

Chinatown and Little Italy together occupy a 38-block area of lower Manhattan where two immigrant communities have overlapped for nearly a century and a half. The streetscape consists mainly of brick tenements five to six stories tall, many with ground-floor shops, cast-iron storefronts and wrought-iron fire escapes. Older Federal and Greek Revival townhouses survive, often altered, along with factories, clubhouses, churches, schools and two parks, Columbus Park and DeSalvio Playground. The district was listed for its role in the history of American immigration, particularly Chinese and Italian settlement during the great wave of arrivals between 1880 and 1921. Its tenements illustrate how housing reform laws, beginning with the Tenement House Act of 1867, shaped urban living. Rear yards and the former Mulberry Bend slum area near Columbus Park may also hold archaeological evidence of daily life. The period of significance runs from about 1800 to 1965.