Stan O'Connor's China Town & Little Italy Walking Tour
Chinatown, Little Italy and Their FoodsThis tour is about the immigrants of 19th-and-20th-century New York. Into a rough, tough African-American area came waves of immigrant Irish, followed in succession by Italians, then by Chinese. You’ll see reminders of their lives on this history-rich three-hour walk.
We start at the corner of Grand and Broadway, currently the home of the Culinary Institute. This was once the palatial Broadway retail store of Brooks Brothers, ransacked by immigrant Irish in the Draft Riot of 1863. Two blocks east on Grand brings us to Ferrara’s Pasticcheria, open since the 1890s. Here you can order one of their wonderful desserts of Italian ices, chocolates, tiramisu and other pastries. Another short walk brings us to Piemonte Ravioli Co., where you can shop for freshly-made pasta for your own cooking.
Up Mott Street we go, to Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. This large Roman Catholic church and graveyard came here in the 1830s, when this area was already turning Irish, long before the giant immigration wave of Irish that followed the Potato Famine of the 1840s.
In the 1860s, southern Italians and Sicilians came to this area largely because it held one of the few Catholic churches of old New York. Their numbers swelled and, by 1900, this neighborhood was already known as Little Italy. By that time, Little Italy was a huge area, from here all the way down to Chatham Square, with Italians and people of Italian descent living as far as Greenwich Village, more than a mile away. Into one street corner of this burgeoning neighborhood, in the 1890s, came a few Chinese workingmen. Their numbers grew slowly at first, then expanded when the US government eased restriction of Asian immigration in the 1930s. The tables were turned by the late 20th century: Chinatown, once a street corner inside Little Italy, has become bigger than Little Italy ever was.
Let’s go down Mott Street --
And tell me what street
Is nice as Mott Street in July?
-- and see the change from mostly Italian places, to mostly Asian, in just a few short blocks. Crossing over Canal Street, we leave Little Italy for Chinatown. Mott Street is the main drag of touristy Chinatown, but we’ll also take in Pell, Doyers and The Bowery, so you get the real feel for the real neighborhood. See an entire block of barbershops and Chinese jewelry shops. These are followed by a Cantonese place famous for its dim-sum -- that is, steaming little noodle dishes, where we can get a table…or half of one! This isn’t a touristy restaurant but, rather, one frequented by Asians. I’ve been coming here for years, for their dim-sum. We’ll sample a few dishes.
Then we’ll head over to Chatham Square, where a statue of a 19th-century Chinese nationalist hero stands. Chatham Square, 160 years ago, was known as Five Points, said to be the most dangerous neighborhood in the USA.
After taking a look at what I believe to be the oldest Jewish burial ground in the western hemisphere, we’ll go up Mott, and down a side alley, where two ladies run a sui-gow shop. Sui-gow are boiled-then-grilled pork-and-leek dumplings, covered in soy sauce and served up on little plates. Mm-mm!
Then we’ll continue down into Columbus Park, to see a juxtaposition of Italian and Chinese cultures. Columbus Park was named for the explorer when it opened in 1895; this was part of Little Italy then. There is still an Italian restaurant, abutted on both sides by Chinese funeral homes.
Across the park is The Tombs, the notorious county jail for Manhattan, and the Criminal Courts Building, where IMF head Dominic Strauss-Kahn was arraigned. Nearby are the beautiful marble Romanesque court buildings of Foley Square. At one, you may remember seeing Michael Milkin or Martha Stewart ascending the steps to their trials. At another, Santa Claus was given his hearing in the 1947 film, Miracle On 34th Street.
The tour ends at the African Burial Ground, where 18th- and 19th-century African-Americans buried their dead.
It’s easy to get a cab from here, back to Midtown. It’s also close to several Subway lines. If there’s something you do or don’t want to see on this tour, it can be customized to your tastes.
$25 per person, minimum of 2. Bring pocket cash for food.