China Town and Little Italy

Chinatown and Little Italy

Have you ever taken a stroll down the lower eastside of Manhattan? It’s a great place to be indeed. The many smells of fine Chinese and Italian food flood the streets. Yes this is where the famous Chinatown and Little Italy is located in New York City. There are more then just fine foods, shops, and people. In fact there is a lot of history behind these two towns that many people do not know about. How they came to be and what makes each town unique.

First you have the famous Chinatown. It is the largest Chinatown in the United States. It is favored by Chinese immigrants and has an estimated population between 70,000 to 150,000 people alone. During the mid eighteenth century some Chinese trailers and sailors trickled in but during the beginning of the nineteenth century Chinese arrived in many numbers. They first came into the west coast then were driven to the east because of mobs and discriminations. By 1880, the growing joint in the Five Points slums on the south east side of New York became home to between 200 and 1,100 Chinese. The Chinese from the start clumped together because of racial discrimination. Chinatown was unlike other ghettos because it was largely self supporting. There was a solid system in Chinatown. For example, businesses created jobs for people and economic aid was available. Chinatown was still growing till the end of the nineteenth century. It was getting so bad that something needed to be done. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed to prevent the neutralization by any Chinese already in the United States. When the Exclusion Act was lifted in 1943, China was given a small immigration quota, and the community continued to grow. It started expanding slowly throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s. Today Chinatown is greatly crowded but is still growing. Chinatown now offers to many tourists and residents like restaurants, booming fruit, fish markets, and shops of knickknacks. But its overcrowding streets are the main offer it gives us.

Secondly, other then the famous Chinatown and its history there is another ethnic town that has captured many peoples interest and that is the town of Little Italy. Italian immigrants first settled in the Five Points neighborhood in the 1850s, spreading north into what is now Little Italy in the 1880s. Little Italy was