Class Meeting Points

Click a pin to see the teacher and meeting location.


Site Map

Red pins = Asian American / Chinatown sites (1–10). Blue pins = Jewish History / Lower East Side sites (11–16). Click any pin for the site name and address.


Site List

Asian American History — Chinatown

  1. Church of the Transfiguration — 25 Mott Street What does this church’s history tell us about space, authority, and belonging in immigrant communities?

  2. Quong Yuen Shing & Co. — 32 Mott Street What does the history of this store reveal about the challenges and resourcefulness of immigrant communities?

  3. Chinese Theater — 5–7 Doyers Street What does the history of this site tell us about cultural connection for immigrant communities, and how does it complicate narratives of immigrant isolation?

  4. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee — 6 Doyers Street (Chinatown Post Office) / 21 Pell Street (First Chinese Baptist Church) How does Lee’s story intersect with gender, ethnicity, and citizenship?

  5. Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) — 16 Mott Street What does this site tell us about immigrant communities forging their own political institutions when excluded from formal political life?

  6. Port Arthur Restaurant — 7–9 Mott Street How did Asian immigrant entrepreneurs navigate the constraints of formal and informal exclusion?

  7. Kimlau Memorial — 22 Chatham Square Who was Kimlau, and what might be significant about his military service in the larger narrative of Chinese American history?

  8. Mahayana Temple Buddhist Association — 133 Canal Street What does this site reveal about the ways immigrant communities transform urban spaces?

  9. Sun Yat-sen Plaza — Columbus Park, Mulberry Street & Baxter Street Who was Sun Yat-sen, what was his connection to Chinatown, and what does this statue tell us about immigrants and their homeland ties?

  10. Lin Zexu Statue — 23 Chatham Square What was Lin Zexu known for, and what might his memorialization reveal about how Chinese Americans reflect on 19th-century imperialism?


Jewish History — Lower East Side

  1. Lower East Side Tenement Museum — 97 Orchard Street What does the history of tenement living tell us about the challenges and opportunities Jewish immigrants faced in the US?

  2. Pushcart Market — Hester Street (between Orchard and Allen) What were the opportunities and challenges of the pushcart economy, and what does the political activism around it reveal about immigrant precarity?

  3. Lewis Hine / Orchard Street — Orchard Street & Lower East Side Who was Lewis Hine, how was his work explicitly political, and how does it connect to how immigrant communities are surveilled today?

  4. The Jewish Daily Forward Building — 173 East Broadway In what ways did this newspaper help immigrants navigate their transition from the old world to the new — and how was it more than a newspaper?

  5. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) — Lower East Side neighborhood How did HIAS serve as both a communal organization and a political one?

  6. Eldridge Street Synagogue (REQUIRED) — 12 Eldridge Street How does this site reflect the cultural needs of immigrants, and how does it also touch on the ways upward mobility and assimilation can hollow out ethnic enclaves?