The area Chinatown occupies has always been an immigrant, working-class community, driven by the proximity of labor and transportation. Originally an Irish community, it later became a predominantly Syrian-Lebanese community that was also home to Jewish and West-African-Barbadian immigrants....

Before the 1960s, the southern half of today’s Chinatown was a Syrian-Lebanese community. While the advent of a more affluent and mobile second generation started the exodus of the Syrian-Lebanese community to the suburbs, the construction of the Central Artery put a quick and painful end to...