Culhane, Kerri Elizabeth;
(2023)
Constructing New York’s Chinatown, 1882-1965: Transnational Politics, Identity, and the Architecture of Poy Gum Lee.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Between 1882 and 1965, a time of restrictive anti-Chinese immigration policy in the US, the Chinese community of New York created an urban landscape built on Chinese social, cultural and building traditions. Scholars have explored the economic utility of familiar Chinatown architectural tropes, but this history looks instead at the socio-politically representative value of the built environment. While Chinatown and its Chinese constituents were interpreted by outsiders as ‘tradition-bound’ and ‘pre-modern’, its many familial, regional, merchant and fraternal associations were at work shaping a modern Chinese Republic. These associations, based on the Chinese huiguan, a physical place and social space crucial to the maintenance of cultural identities for sojourners within China and abroad, were deeply engaged in Chinese politics, including reformist and revolutionary activity that culminated in the Revolution of 1911. To understand strategies of self-representation, this thesis examines two of Chinatown’s most powerful organisations and their impact in shaping its built environment: the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) and the On Leong Tong. The analysis is concentrated across two periods defined by US immigration policy: the Era of Exclusion (1882-1945) and of Nominal Inclusion (1945-1965). A central figure spanning much of this study and embodying the complex interconnections between China and New York is the Chinese American architect Poy Gum Lee (1900-1968). Lee was central to the emergence of modern architecture in China and Chinatown at a time when architecture in both contexts was a signifier of Chinese modernity. For Republican China, this took the form of combining Western technologies with Chinese architectural features which Lee brought back to New York in the post-war era as an imported Chinese architectural modernism. His designs for the CCBA (1947; 1957) and On Leong Tong (1948-1950) highlight the strong transnational ties between New York’s Chinatown and China in the mid 20th century.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Constructing New York’s Chinatown, 1882-1965: Transnational Politics, Identity, and the Architecture of Poy Gum Lee |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| Keywords: | New York, Chinatown, Poy Gum Lee, Chinese Modernism, New York Chinatown, Built Environment, Transnationalism, Strategic Essentialism, Shophouse |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10178539 |
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