Thread by @erinreiss

In 1985, NYC ordered 155 bilingual street signs to hang in Chinatown. Today, only 101 remain. We set out to map them 🧵👇

My latest for @nytimes, a multimedia investigation into the forgotten history and slow disappearance of NYC's Chinese signs:

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

2/ This story is the culmination of 9 years of on-and-off research and the product of a huge team effort, help from countless individuals and organizations, dozens of visits to dusty archives and windowless government offices, street canvassing, digging, begging, and nudging.

3/ In 2013, I started collecting Chinese maps of Manhattan and walking around the neighborhood with a microphone to ask residents what they called various streets in their native dialects — and piecing together the surprising history of Chinese street names in the city.

4/ My research brought me to Chinatown’s bilingual street name signs. Where did these signs come from? Who chose what Chinese names would be used? How was it determined which streets would get Chinese names? Why is Chinatown the only neighborhood in NYC with bilingual signs?

5/ As we dug, we learned there's no existing record of exactly how this program came to be or even where signs were originally installed. So we set about interviewing local residents, filing Freedom of Information Requests, looking up retired officials, and poring over archives

6/ It turns out Chinese names for NYC streets are as old as Chinatown itself.

Here are some letters from the late 1800’s / early 1900’s, showing Chinese names for some familiar streets decades before the “official” Chinese street names first appeared on city signs (h/t Eric Ng)

7/ But over the years, different waves of Chinese immigrants have used different names for the same street. Sometimes differing in what character is used to make a sound, like these two different names for Bowery, hung on the same corner (at Canal): 包厘 vs包梨

8/ Other times, the difference has to do with what dialect is more familiar to the person giving the name. While Chinatown is often described as a monolithic “Chinese” population, it is home to a rich diversity of histories, dialects, and cultures.

9/ Mott Street’s Chinese name (勿) sounds like “maht” in Cantonese, but totally different in Mandarin (like “wu”). Meanwhile, I’ve heard several Mandarin speakers refer to the street as 意大利街 (literally, “Italy Street”).

10/ The signs and the names that were ultimately chosen reflect who held sway in Chinatown at different points in the neighborhood's history, and how the community was regarded by the city.

11/ All told, the story of these bilingual signs offer a window into the incredible diversity and rich history of Manhattan’s Chinatown.

It was produced by @DeniseDSLu, @mlouttit, @umay, @ahinderaker, and myself for @NYTMetro

nytimes.com/interactive/20…