Chinatown Atlas Now Online!

ByChinese Historical Society of New England

Chinatown Atlas Now Online!

The Chinese Historical Society of New England is celebrating the online launch of MIT Professor Emeritus Tunney Lee’s Boston Chinatown Atlas (http://chinatownatlas.mit.edu/). The website documents and explores Chinatown’s growth and change through time as told by personal stories, photos, maps, and interactive features. Please join us at this free presentation to hear Lee speak about the creation process and plans for the future.

Boston’s Chinatown serves as the economic, social, and cultural center for one of the fastest growing populations in Massachusetts. The project and the website seeks to understand and tell the story of Chinatown’s history, dynamics, and context, and to encourage future generations to appreciate the traditions and to preserve the community’s vitality. The presented information comes from extensive archival research, census data, and interviews with community members, contextualized the the history of Greater Boston. The Chinatown Atlas concept originated more than 20-years ago between Tunney Lee and Randall Imai through a series illustrations of Chinatown.

The project hosted a panel exhibit at the former Chinatown Lantern reading room library in 2012 and the Kwong Kow Chinese School at 87 Tyler St. Imai’s illustrations were exhibited at the Boston Public Library Leventhal Map Center in 2014. The Boston Chinatown Atlas is a collaborative project led by Tunney Lee, David Chang, Randall Imai, Jonathan Wyss, Kelly Sandefer, Kye Liang, Tien-yi Lee, Chinese Historical Society of New England, Chinatown Lantern Cultural and Educational Center, UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies, and many former MIT alumni and community members.