Reflective Urbanisms:

Mapping New York Chinatown

Interview conducted in May 2025.

+ What are some of the most exciting stories that have interested you about this building? What are some of the histories that you’re thinking about as you’re working on this building?
I find that the first thing you like to do is find out what it is and where it came from. Who built this? It wasn’t Doyer, who died in 1812. It’s 30 years later. There is an old article that talks all about the history of this section and how it was split up into different plots, who bought them…

We all know it was the Chinese Tuxedo [Restaurant that opened in the early 1900s] and finding the interiors of the Chinese Tuxedo is a great start for us, because we’ve literally uncovered it all as it was.

+ Where have you found it and what have you found?
It’s on the second floor and the third floor. Rhe original encaustic tiles are on the second floor, with tiled walls and tin ceiling, all corresponding with the photographs you seen in the postcards. It’s kind of amazing. Time capsule. But we still have not uncovered what’s before that. Just a bunch of Irish saloons, which we’re trying to get to the end of, but, Henry Doyer died in, I think, the early 1800s. His son died thereon after, where in between the estate dissolvement and when we think this building was built in about 1840. My gut instinct is that it was a gin palace, because it’s built that way. It’s built in that way, in the Germania style with the arched windows.