Chinatown's housing stock is still mostly composed of cramped
tenement buildings, some of which are over 100 years old.
It is still common in such buildings to have bathrooms
in the hallways, to be shared among multiple apartments.
A federally subsidized housing project, named Confucius Plaza,
was completed on the corner of Bowery and Division
streets in 1976. This 44-story residential
tower block gave much needed new housing stock
to thousands of residents. The building also housed
a new public grade school, P.S. 124
(or Yung Wing Elementary).
Besides being the first and largest affordable
housing complex specifically available to the
Chinatown population Confucius Plaza
is also a cultural and institutional landmark,
springing forth community organization,
Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE),
one of Chinatown's oldest political/community organizations,
founded in 1974.
For much of Chinatown's history,
there were few unique architectural features
to announce to visitors that they had arrived
in the neighborhood (other than the language of the shop signs).
In 1962, at Chatham Square the Lieutenant Benjamin Ralph Kimlau
Memorial archway was erected in memorial
of the Chinese-Americans who died in World War II.
This memorial, which bears calligraphy
by the great Yu Youren (1879—1964),
is mostly ignored by the residents
due to its poor location on a busy car thoroughfare
with little pedestrian traffic.
A statue of Lin Zexu, also known as Commissioner Lin,
a Foochowese Chinese official who opposed the opium trade,
is also located at the square; it faces uptown along East Broadway,
now home to the bustling Fuzhou neighborhood
and known locally as Fuzhou Street.
In the 1970s, New York Telephone,
then the local phone company started
capping the street phone booths with
pagoda-like decorations. In 1976,
the statue of Confucius in front of Confucius Plaza
became a common meeting place.
In the 1980s, banks which opened new branches
and others which were renovating
started to use Chinese traditional styles
for their building facades.
The Church of the Transfiguration,
a national historic site built in 1815, stands off Mott Street.
In 2010, Chinatown and Little Italy were listed
in a single historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.
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