91-93 Bowery
Wyndham Garden Hotel
Built in 2011
2024
91-93 Bowery
Chuan Kung Music Palace
1977 - 2000
91-93 Bowery
Universal Photoplay
Architect: McKim, Mead & White
Built in 1891 || Redesigned as a theatre by Louis A. Sheinart / Opened in 1914
1940s
Interview
WITH TOMIE ARAI (ARTIST AND CHINATOWN ACTIVIST)
Interview conducted in May 2022.
All photographs in this interview are courtesy of Tomie Arai unless otherwise noted.
+ Please give me a brief introduction of yourself – How long have you been working in Chinatown? How did you come to be connected to Chinatown?
I was born and raised in New York in the Upper West Side, in post-World War II New York. When I was growing up, there were very few Asians in the city. I’m Japanese-American, and there were only a handful of people my age. I saw Chinatown as the only geographic community of Asians that I was familiar with. Before the 1960s, it was still a bachelor’s society, before the new influx of immigrants. I think that, as a result of the immigration in the 1960s, there were, in the 1970s, a lot of people my age who decided to think more deeply about identity.
When I was in my 20s, I heard about this group of Asian American writers and artists who were coming together to put together an anthology of Asian American art — it was based on this group of folk musicians called Yellow Pearl… and so I went down to Chinatown and met this group of young artists and musicians.
A black and white photo of Tomie (second from right), a mural group member and two mural artists, Ed Alicea and Fred Hernandez in 1974.
It was really the first time that I was in a group of Asians, growing up in the city. I used to be the only Asian in the class, a familiar story for people of my generation. It was the beginning of my path to becoming an artist. I met my husband (Legan Wong) in 1972 in Basement Workshop. When I met him, he was teaching the first Asian American experience course at Hunter College, before Ethnic Studies was taught at college. They wouldn’t allow him to call it an Asian American History course. Faye Chiang, the director of Basement Workshop, allowed him to teach the course. He got me interested in history; his parents owned a laundry in Crown Heights and his mother worked in a garment factory in Chinatown and later in Long Island City.
When I became the first artist-in-residence at MOCA (Museum of the Chinese in the Americas) in 1988, I read a lot of the stories in the archives. It was an offshoot of Basement [Workshop]— [originally called] the Chinatown History Project. At that time, I did a silkscreen print project based on oral histories of Asian women living in NYC. In 2006, I co-initiated a project called Archaeology Change, looking at changes in the community. We interviewed the landlord of the building that it’s currently in, Larry Goodman, who talked about the fascinating history of the neighborhood that changed. We interviewed the owners of Pearl River Mart, grocery owners across the street, people who were being displaced by MOCA, etc…
Basement was more than an arts program. It had four programs:
- Bridge Magazine (a publication of Eleanor Yung’s brother, Danny Yung) that had a 10-year history and was published bi-yearly.
- AmerAsia Creative Arts
- A youth / daycare program
- Chinatown History Project – which began with interviewing tenants living in Chinatown… Jack [Tchen] & Charlie [Lai] began then to seriously collect artifacts, to salvage the things that were being discarded. This was the beginning of MOCA.
Basement was made up of young people and right out of college, you had like-minded people there. Back in the 1970s, you had alternative spaces: artist-run spaces which allowed artists to come together, which then became the stepping stones to galleries. I always felt that Basement was unique; it wasn’t defined in any way.
The Music Palace at 91-93 Bowery in 1977. The yellow, north-facing wall can be seen before Tomie’s mural was painted.
+ Tell me about your work with Godzilla and the community you found there.
Godzilla didn’t come about until 20 years later. Most people in Godzilla already had careers at that point. It wasn’t until Godzilla that a lot of curators and artists got more attention. People weren’t in Godzilla to boost their careers; they were just there to talk about the art world being exclusive to people of color. That was part of the conversation going on in the 1990s. It wasn’t until years later when Ken Chen proposed that Godzilla had come full circle and that we should think about disbanding. A group of younger artists wanted to take the reins. We were already being threatened by Toho – the people who owned the copyright of Godzilla – who wanted to take it to court. The next iteration had to have a different name, which became Godzooki.
Godzilla wasn’t rooted in a physical space; it was nomadic. We met at different galleries and at peoples’ houses. Ken Chen was the de facto leader and meetings were initially at his house. There was a lunch group that met in Chinatown. Then we started meeting at galleries like Exit Art, Artists Space, Art in General. At one point, we had a couple hundred people. For a while, we had monthly meetings and we had to set up a phone tree (before the internet) to call people. I remember even sending postcards out; it was ridiculous. I was in charge of mailing lists. We also had a newsletter with shows listed. That’s how we got the news out.
One of the Godzilla shows, curated by Lydia Yee, was called “Sights of Chinatown.” She had all of the artists do shows in the different stores. Leader of the Luncheon Club, Ikjoon Kang, decided to take a table from a restaurant – I don’t know how he got it – and put all of the names of the artists in Godzilla on it and laminated it. He also came up with a zine of all the cheapest eats, the restaurants they had eaten at. Back in the day you could get lunch for $3.
+ What was one of your favorite dishes in Chinatown?
Sam Bo Fan (Three Treasures Rice) was one of my faves then.
It was one of my favorites then and I can’t find it anymore.
My husband and I had our wedding banquet at Port Arthur [Restaurant at 7-9 Mott]. One of their specialties was roast chicken stuffed with sticky rice. I still think about that. I think it closed like a week after.
+ What was your impression of Chinatown at the time, back in the 1970s?
There are old-timers like Henry Chang (Chinatown’s resident writer), Wing Lee (related to Sandy Lee), Jan Lee’s brother, Corky Lee and Victor Lee who all hung out together as teenagers and talked about Chinatown being like a village and a small town: everyone knew each other and grew up together… and it was, in many respects, much smaller in scale. I remember that it felt like we were building something new when we came down. Formerly, I felt like there weren’t a lot of platforms for young people to have a voice. It’s not surprising that a lot of people who were members of Basement went on to become leaders in the community, running senior centers and community centers, becoming teachers and principals, founding health clinics and becoming leaders in Chinatown.
My husband was involved in the Census. He was sent to these buildings to knock on doors. He had to go into alleys and it was eye-opening to see some of these living conditions. He didn’t know all of these places existed. I think that was the beginning of him really wanting to learn more about history. He participated in the Chinatown Health Fair.
The mural, “History of Chinese Immigration to the US ” in Chatham Square, 1972 (Project Director: Alan Okada) and a shot of the wall with scaffolding and the leaflet advertising the block party held in Chatham Square.
In the 1970s, there were a lot of different Chinatown events that galvanized younger people my age, in their 20s, to really think about how they could help the community and how they could become involved. There was so much political rhetoric in the 1970s and there was all of this discussion about theory and practice and bringing together activism and community. There were all of these storefronts, where people would get mobilized out of, brick and mortar spaces where people would come and learn about the organization…
(Left) Chatham Square, 1972.
(Right) “History of Chinese Immigration to the US” mural in Chatham Square.
A shot of the scaffold and mural group painting “Wall of Respect for Women” on East Broadway and Rutgers, 1974.
+ Tell me about the murals you worked on in Chinatown with Basement Workshop and City Arts.
I was introduced to murals through Basement. My first project was walking down the street and there were some people painting a mural on Pike Street – Project Reach, a youth program working with teens in gangs – and they even put my portrait in the mural. They were able to partner with an organization called City Arts Workshop. The first mural they did was in the Smith Houses on Catherine. They proposed Basement to do a mural in Chatham Square.
“The History of Chinese Immigration to the U.S.” was the title of the mural. It was directed by Alan Okada. I might have painted a day on the scaffolding. There were dozens of young people who helped paint it. It was a yellow mural with a scene from the Massacre of Rock Springs… It was painted where the Global Bank is now, in what used to be an old tenement. There was stationary scaffolding back in those days (without insurance!) five stories high, without protection. I can’t believe we took 14-year olds on those things.
I worked with City Arts for seven years. It was really designed to involve young people and people who were not artists in the creation of these public art murals. There was a process when we really tried to engage the community and get feedback. A lot of those murals really lasted for years because people were really invested in maintaining them.
“Wall of Respectful Women” was painted on East Broadway at the Garden Restaurant, where the Jewish radicals used to meet before it became Wu’s Wonton King.
I went on to do a mural with Alan on Madison and Pike (on the P.S. 3 playground / side of a pentecostal church) called “Chi Lai Rise Up, Arriba!” It was a mural about Asian American history in the shape of a tenement building opening up. At the time, people were protesting Confucius Plaza (1973-74). There were so many protests about discrimination on the construction site. There were daily pickets and I actually got arrested too. It was an important part of labor history in Chinatown.
At the corner of Hester and Bowery, at I.S. 131 — the old junior high school in Chinatown that was previously I.S. 165, we created a mural.
We were also invited to paint a mural on the Music Palace. It was one of the last live movie theaters in Chinatown. (There was the Sun Sing Theatre, Music Palace and another one on East Broadway.)
There were many Chinatown gangs at the time and the boys in my group were really terrified to be recruited. The owner of the Music Palace was concerned about the “gang kids” and wanted a mural painted over the bullet holes in the wall. It was one of the successful projects and was up for over 10 years.
Music Palace was a meeting place for families.
I went once to watch a movie. It was hilarious; it was chaos. People weren’t quiet, there was yelling, talking. I remember a woman selling oranges in the theater and throwing them to people, like basketball. They would bring their lunch and everyone would be eating. It was an experience. I remember a woman walking down the aisle spraying Lysol. Then there were kids running around…
This is the corner where the Wyndham Gardens Hotel now is.
Right around the corner from there is 81 Bowery, an SRO. Historically, it’s been there for over 20 years.
There are people who have lived there for 20 years. There are these cubicles. There were mostly men that lived there. One of the men, Mr. Wong, said he loved seeing the mural because it meant he was almost home. It was kind of a landmark, he always looked for it.
+ Tell me about Chinatown Art Brigade and how it forms part of your artistic practice.
It’s been so interesting to work with W.O.W. because it’s a younger generation of artists and people interested in creating work about the neighborhood. It’s really opened up my eyes to what possibilities there are that are different from the way I’ve worked in the past.
I love murals, but there are so many other ways you can imagine spaces and transform them. I think originally that’s what CAB wanted to do — to question how artists can work with communities and develop with communities to speak about some of the things that are hard to address and to make changes. I think as artists, we’re trying to make art and say things differently.
The mural painted on the side of the Music Palace in 1977, “Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown.”
The mural group poses on scaffolding while painting “Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown.”
One of the hallmarks of the murals is the process — you can’t paint a big mural by yourself. CAB has learned from its mistakes as it neglected a lot of steps in the process. We’re always trying to learn from that. One of the things I appreciate so much about being in Chinatown is that I am always so aware that I am simultaneously an outsider and an insider. An insider through the years I’ve spent working here, but I am not privileged in a way to speak on behalf of the community. I need to be aware of my role in this complicated process, which is to listen, be open and never assume anything.
I love that Chinatown is something where you see things at scale. The city can be overwhelming and I come here and there are some things that are constant. Like seeing Karlin on the corner. Places that are still here. I appreciate them.
+ How have you seen Chinatown change over the past decades?
I feel like in many ways, I’m kind of an outlier. I see Chinatown through the eyes of someone who visits it, which isn’t the same as someone who lives here day-to-day. We did a mapping project with CAAAV (Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence) with the tenants and it was an interesting experience for me, because people who live here don’t see the changes… because they live with the changes. It seems to people visiting that things are changing overnight.
Now I feel like everything has changed. The store you wanted to go to is now a bar. I think that there was a hyper development happening here until the pandemic… and now you see so many abandoned storefronts. Things have emptied out in a way that contributes to this feeling of real precariousness. You can sense that the future of Chinatown is threatened.
Chinatown Today wall (left) and completed mural (right) at Pike and East Broadway, 1973. (Project director: Alan Okada)
+ What are your feelings about what Chinatown has faced since the pandemic started?
The pandemic has changed a lot of things. It’s made it that much harder to understand how to get past the impact. Jobs, housing… Thinking about where this community sits in terms of the plans the City has for recovery — it’s hard to wrap your head around.
The issue of safety is driving so much fear and fear of change. More calls for policing give the sense that this community isn’t safe. I think we really have to try to understand how these issues are connected.
It’s always been so important to me to live and work here in Chinatown because I feel like it’s a microcosm of the city. Chinatown is such a global place, and not just a local neighborhood. What happens here has an important impact on what happens elsewhere.
91-93 BOWERY - BUILDING PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs taken in 2024.