75-85 East Broadway
2024
75-85 East Broadway
Sun Sing Theatre (former New Canton Theater and Florence Theater) and adjacent parking lot
1950s - 1990s
75-85 East Broadway
1940s
75-85 East Broadway
(Schematic render of the buildings that stood here, according to the footprints indicated on the 1894 fire insurance maps)
1894
Interview
WITH LAMGEN LEÒN (OFFICE + SITE MANAGER, CHINATOWN B.I.D.)
Interview conducted in May 2022.
+ Would you give me a brief introduction of yourself — When did you come to New York?
My name is Lamgen Leon — I’ve been working here at the Chinatown Partnership since 2006. I was born in the Dominican Republic and from there, went to Hong Kong. I lived there for five or six years and then I came to New York to join my brother in 1974 for the first time. I stayed here for one year and went to high school for a year. Then I went back to the DR and finished high school there, then came back to New York in 1980. I’ve been here ever since.
+ How long have you been working in Chinatown? How did you come to be connected to Chinatown?
I used to go to high school in midtown, in 1974. Either before or after classes, I would come to Chinatown for food: lunch, dinner. My brother and I used to go to that restaurant on Bayard — Yuen Yuen Bing Sut. I loved their sam bo fan, which came with soy sauce chicken, one Chinese sausage and one fried egg, and would occasionally get their soup, red bean ice and plum juice.
We used to live in north Harlem near City College. Most of the time, we went further east, took the B/D train and got off at Grand Street to go to Chinatown. Because we were Chinese, I remember that when we were around W4th or Broadway Lafayette [subway stations] during rush hour, people would hover by us to grab our seats – they knew that we would be getting off at Grand Street by Chinatown.
I came [to Chinatown] for food and also to watch movies.
When I came back in 1980 from the Dominican Republic to New York City for college, at this time, my brother and I lived in Queens. We would still come often to Chinatown. There was only one Chinatown back then, until the mid-1980s. I went to Hunter College and studied Latin American studies. After I graduated, I got a job at the Asian American Center (AAC) at Queens College doing research. I met one of the advisors (and a professor – Evelyn Hu Dehart) at a conference. Her speciality was in Chinese Latin American studies. She knew that the AAC was looking for a Chinese Latino to do research, so she recommended me. I was there for one year and then finished the project.
Lamgen Leòn outside of what he recalls used to be the entrance of the Sun Sing Theatre. Photographed during our interview session, May 2022.
I used to volunteer at what is now the MOCA (Museum of the Chinese in the Americas), which was called the Chinatown History Project at the time. I volunteered and we collected artifacts… I began as a volunteer and later on, the Chinatown History Project was looking for an administrative assistant. I applied and got the job, and that’s how Chinatown became my second home. I started to work in Chinatown full-time and that’s how I really got to know more about Chinatown. That was in the mid-1980s.
Jack Tchen was also the co-director of the AAC at Queens College. I knew he was trying to collect artifacts from an opera that was moving. They had all of these Cantonese opera costumes, and I heard they needed volunteers to move the costumes.
Lamgen stands in the building, where he remembers the ticket counter for the old Sun Sing Theatre used to be, 2022.
+ What was it like working in the Chinatown History Project / MOCA? Tell me about your work with them.
I learned a lot about Chinatown. I was there for 13 years. I was the second longest staff at the Chinatown History Project. I would go every day to the office at 70 Mulberry, and worked there from 9AM to 5PM on installations and exhibitions, on administrative and accounting duties too. It was a small organization, so we all wore many different hats. We had to do everything ourselves.
We also collected artifacts; we would go to lunch and walk around a lot. Sometimes people would call us and tell us someone was moving and to ask if we wanted to take a look and take anything. People in Chinatown knew about the Chinatown History Project, they knew about us. Stores and apartments called us. I remember specifically there was a bar/restaurant on Mott Street –I think where the TenRen Tea Shop currently is, or next to it – with a giant neon dragon sign. [Golden Dragon Restaurant.] They closed and we went there to take a look; it was so large that we couldn’t take the sign. Most likely it got thrown away.
Another place — Joy Luck at 57 Mott — was a very popular place among American-born Chinese. It closed maybe around 15 years ago. When they closed, it was very sentimental. People went to eat there one last time to say good-bye. We used to collect storefront windows too — MOCA has a lot of glass storefronts in their collection. We went and retrieved the sign. We specifically asked a glass company to remove the sign and put it in our storage warehouse space.
One time, we went to retrieve the storefront glass. I can’t remember if it was Golden Dragon or Joy Luck Restaurant. The company we hired used to be on Broome Street, and we called them to help us to remove the glass to preserve it. The guy who came to help us — it turned out that it was his grandfather or father who had actually helped to initially install the sign, decades ago.
Back then, most of the people in Chinatown worked in factories. There was a store at the southeast corner of Elizabeth and Canal, where today there is a jewelry store. Before that, it was a little hardware store and all the Chinese folks used to go there to get scissors and little things. When the owner was about to close, he called MOCA to come collect whatever we wanted. We went to the loft in the store and collected a lot of artifacts.
Quong Yuen Shing at 32 Mott was the oldest general store in Chinatown for the longest time. I remember going there to buy Yankees tickets; they were also a TicketMaster operator. I knew the guy who handled the machine and he would help me find better seats. One day, I think they were either moving or renovating. They took down their sign and they dumped it across the street outside of the Transfiguration Church. During my lunch break, I saw the sign… we immediately took it and right now it’s in MOCA’s storage.
Unfortunately the owner [Paul Lee] passed away around 15-16 years ago.
+ What were your first impressions of Chinatown when you arrived?
What was Chinatown like in the 1970s?
In the 1970s, I was young. I felt comfortable coming to Chinatown, even though I was a little afraid of the gangs. I knew that if I didn’t stare at them, I wouldn’t get in trouble. I came at all different hours — at 8, 9 in the evening. Sometimes we would finish movies at 11 in the evening and I wasn’t afraid of taking the subway so late at night heading back uptown.
I remember there were a lot of neon signs.
+ What do you remember about the Sun Sing Theatre? What kind of movies were shown there? Who attended the movies?
There were around 5 movie theaters or so in Chinatown. There was Music Palace, one at the southeast corner of Mulberry and Canal, one at the corner of East Broadway and Catherine, one next to Manhattan Bridge on Canal where it’s now a temple, the Mahayana Temple, and Sun Sing Theatre.
All of these theaters used to show Hong Kong movies. I went there to see Hong Kong films. There were all Chinese people of different ages — mostly teenagers, adults and seniors. I don’t remember little kids being there a lot, though it could be because I went there to watch movies pretty late. We used to go after lunch or dinner.
The current day building; a two-story mall with multiple vendors. Photographed in 2022.
+ Describe the exterior of the building.
In front of the theater, there was a glass window display with photos of the movies being shown. Back then, they used to put photos of scenes of the movie up, as well as upcoming movies and schedules. They used to show two movies back-to-back. With one ticket, you could watch two movies — you could stay all day! They never cleared the theater. Though of course, it was usually one good movie, one bad movie.
The front entrance is located in the same place now, where the supermarket is today.
Lamgen’s diagrammatic site plan of the Sun Sing Theatre (ticket counter, the snack concession and the movie theatre screen), drawn from memory during our interview session, 2022.
+ What was the interior of the theater like?
It was dark in the theater.
You walked in from East Broadway — the entrance was nothing special. I remember the concession stand on the right side to buy snacks and the ticket booth on the left.
The only unusual thing was when you walked into the movie theater (there was only one), the screen was right there. You had to walk around to go to the row of seats in the back. No one liked to sit in the very front.
You could hear the rumbling of the subway train inside. But back then, the subway wasn’t running as frequently as it is now.
+ What happened to the theater to cause it to close down?
VHS tapes.
In Hong Kong, soap operas became so popular that TVB, a Hong Kong TV station, started to produce them in large quantities. They became so popular in New York City too. Video rentals (though not through Blockbuster) became so popular. Chinese soap operas became so popular to rent, with 50 to 60 episodes each. You could become a member at a place for like $200-$300 / year and you could rent 100 tapes in a year.
That definitely caused the theater to lose business. This was probably in the 1990s.
I know the person who used to own the franchise for movie rentals, known here as “the Chinese Blockbuster”. As an entrepreneur, he signed a deal with TVB and was their exclusive agent to rent VHS tapes. VHS tapes became so popular that fewer people went to the theater to go watch movies.
That’s what killed all the movie theaters in Chinatown.
+ Tell me about this experience of re-entering the Sun Sing Theatre in the 1990s after it had been closed down.
How did you get access into the Sun Sing Theatre? What was it like inside then? What artifacts did you feel were important to collect?
When I was working at MOCA, the office was at 70 Mulberry. It was a city-owned building. The Sun Sing Theatre was also city-owned. The engineer of 70 Mulberry was the same engineer at the Sun Sing Theatre. There were two architects — one Chinese-American and one Korean-American — who were in charge of some of the local city-owned buildings.
They told us that the theater was closed and they were about to renovate, so they gave us permission to go in to see if we wanted to collect anything.
I think there were around four or five of us who went there. We had unlimited time to go and collect whatever we wanted. I remember we went inside and all the way to the back to the projector room. We saw a lot of stuff — movies in big reels in metal containers, a lot of posters, tickets, postcards, movie announcements of what’s coming up next… one interesting item was a blackboard, maybe a little bigger than 6’ x 4’, with a lot of metal U-clips to hang things. They showed the movie schedules — where they were coming from and where they were going next, like movies coming from Atlanta and going next to Chicago, etc… and their dates. I remember we hung that board on the wall in the collections room at 70 Mulberry.
The theater at that point had been closed for some time. It was dark, dusty and disorganized.
I felt sentimental going in… I felt sorry that the theater had closed. But at that time, we knew that the movie industry had gone south in Chinatown. People weren’t watching Chinese movies in the theater anymore because they could rent them on VHS. I felt sad.
I think we took some items that day and that we needed to come back another day with more help to move things. We went back another day and collected a lot of posters, movies and other things.
Lamgen in the ground-floor supermarket, which he recalls used to be part of the actual theatre before the building was renovated, 2022.
+ Who owned / owns the building? When was this building constructed? Who is the architect for this building?
The City, the DCAS (Department of Citywide Administrative Services), owns the building.
The architects for the [renovation of the] building were city engineers — one Chinese-American (Jack Yuen) and one Korean-American (Mike Hong). I was close to them and knew them well.
+ What happened after the theater closed down? How was the building renovated?
After the theater closed, I’m not exactly sure what happened. But since I’ve been working with the Chinatown BID, I found out that the City subleased it to a developer or a real estate agent to manage. About six or seven years ago, the agent approached the Chinatown Partnership. Because it was subleased from the City, they needed to give a percentage of the space to a non-profit, free of charge. We signed a three year deal to use one of the basement spaces free of charge. When I went back with the Chinatown Partnership, it had been remodeled — it looked completely different.
The building was closed from the mid-1990s until the early 2000s. At this time, nothing really was happening there.
After the renovation, at some time, on the second floor in the back was a dim sum restaurant, a big banquet hall. It was owned by one of our board members. Sometime around 2017 or so, the restaurant closed down. Now, I believe it is a senior center.
+ Who are the current tenants of this building?
There’s a supermarket and lots of little different stores like retail, hair salons…
+ Now you work with the Chinatown BID. How would you describe the work you do for the Chinatown community?
The Chinatown Partnership was created with funding from the LMDC (Post 9/11 Lower Manhattan Development Corporation). I feel that I’m giving back to the community. Since I worked at MOCA, I’ve considered Chinatown my second home. I spend most of my time in Chinatown.
+ What are your feelings about what Chinatown faced when the COVID-19 pandemic began?
When the pandemic in China was getting worse, when we were initially in denial about the pandemic coming to New York City, we were already feeling the effects in Chinatown. People stopped coming to Chinatown. Associations were canceling their lunar new year banquets. At the Chinatown BID, we saw these things happening from the start.
The west side of 75-85 East Broadway and adjacent playground, 2022.
I feel so sorry about what Chinatown has faced. I remember when the mayor announced the lockdown — I think he [Mayor de Blasio] announced on a Friday that the lockdown would begin on Monday — we were still here on Monday. Indoor dining wasn’t allowed; only take-out was allowed. That Monday, in the office, we started to call local restaurants to ask them what their plan was. We looked at Yelp and our database and social media platforms for all of these restaurants. By Tuesday afternoon / Wednesday morning, after all of our telephone calls, there were 119-120 restaurants that said they would still be open for takeout (this is about a third of the restaurants in Chinatown). Later on in April/May, there were only like 40 restaurants open.
We stopped coming into the office that Thursday, but we were still working from home, continuing to call pharmacies, supermarkets and restaurants.
+ How do you feel like you’ve seen Chinatown change over the past decades?
Architecturally. There used to be a lot more old tenements in Chinatown. Now, time changes things and people cannot continue to live in all of the old tenements. I remember from my time at the Chinatown History Project, sometimes the bathroom would be in the middle of the living room without walls, surrounded by some curtains. Many property owners have had to renovate.
There are new buildings. I remember one slide show from the Chinatown History Project — the Citibank building across the street at 2 Mott was one of the newest buildings at the time. But Chinatown has been developing little by little.
There’s a lot of new signage, big billboards.
75-85 EAST BROADWAY - SUN SING THEATRE - HISTORIC IMAGES
All images are courtesy of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Collection.
More images of the Sun Sing Theatre relics can be found on the MOCA website here.
75-85 EAST BROADWAY - BUILDING PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs taken between 2022 – 2024.