Neighborhood Description

The following neighborhood description is from a 2003 neighborhood profile published by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

The Chinatown Area is located on what was the southernmost part of the original Shawmut Peninsula with Washington Street being the neck connecting the island to the Mainland. The Chinatown-South Cove area was created by filing the tidal flats in either side of the neck to create two residential neighborhoods with the Bay Village Neighborhood on the west and the area that is now Chinatown on the east. In the late 1840s, the area's original residents began to move out of the city, making way for newcomers who were mainly Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Syrian immigrants who converted the single-family homes to multiple unit tenements. In the mid-19th century the leather and garment industries located on the eastside of Washington Street near what is now Chinatown and the Leather District. The elevated Orange Line was built along Washington Street in 1899 causing some depressed land values and attracting more garment manufacturers.

The 1880s saw the first Chinese immigrants who were mostly temporary residents with little need to assimilate into the mainstream of society. This largely isolated community of Chinese existed through the mid-20th century as more of Chinatown became of commercial use in addition to the residential neighborhood. In the early 20th century, many of the theaters of the Theater District were built on the fringes of Chinatown to the west. The Southeast Expressway was built in the 1950s and the Castle Square development was built. Part of Chinatown was in the South Cove Urban Renewal Plan, started in 1965. In the 1960s and 1970s, Tufts/New England Medical Center expanded, the Adult Entertainment District was created and the Theater District saw some renovation. The garment district declined and was almost gone by the mid-1990s. From the 1960s to 2000 most of the new housing that was built was high-rise structures, many being subsidized and assisted housing. In the 1990s some more new housing was built, Emerson College began to acquire some properties and make some dormitories near the Tremont Street and Boylston Streets intersection, and many of the businesses in the Adult Entertainment District was closed due to encroaching development.

Census 2000 Profile

Includes Boston Census Tracts 701, 702 and 204.

Additional Resources

Learn more about Chinatown! Neighborhood-specific reports produced by City agencies and local organizations can be found below.

Chinatown Community Snapshot 2009 - English: PDF Flash, Chinese: PDF Flash
The Human Development Overlay District (HD-OD), 2009

Chinatown Profile (condensed version) Census 2000
Boston Redevelopment Authority, 2003

Housing in Chinatown: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Emily Cohen, Amy Mattlage, Matthew Reardon & Chia-Hui Shen (Chinese Progressive Association and Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning), 2007