Chinatown in New York is a vibrant area crammed with restaurants for dumplings, pork buns and hand-pulled noodles. Its sidewalks are full of people, many of them tourists, picking their way through souvenir stores, bubble tea shops, and markets selling everything from fresh and dried fish to herbs and spices.
Locals hang out in leafy Columbus Park for Tai Chi, chess and mahjong. Above the entire area, though, used to loom a brutalist structure and Art Deco monolith— one of four buildings collectively known as The Tombs.
The Tombs was a complex of four prisons, the first of which opened in 1838. They are undergoing demolition and will soon be replaced by another prison which is set to be the tallest one in the world.
Dubbed the ‘Jailscraper’ by locals, the 300-ft-tall, 40-storey mega jail will be a third as high as the Empire State Building and have 1,040 beds.
The Tombs’s demolition is part of the city’s larger Borough-Based Jails Program, a major initiative to close Rikers Island and replace New York’s largest jail complex with four new ones in various communities.
The Borough-Based Jails program is expected to cost $15 billion, according to the mayor’s budget director, Jacques Jiha. Local residents, though, are up in arms over the new project which they see as a blight on their neighbourhood.
Jan Lee, cofounder of Neighbors United Below Canal, told Architectural Digest: “It’s a nightmare. For generations, Chinatown has been overshadowed by jails.
“Our focus should be on safety, scale, and preserving the unique cultural identity of Chinatown.
“It’s a neighbourhood defined by its rich heritage, not by a hazardously constructed jail that threatens its surroundings.”
More than 57,000 people call Chinatown home, according to a 2022 report, of which 34,295 are of Asian descent. Roughly a third of the people living by the demolition site are 65 or older.
A petition organised by the group “Welcome to Chinatown” has been signed by more than 12,000 people.