Urban Renewal or Urban Removal?

Neighborhoods Under Pressure

"Many of the houses have dark tunnels leading in from the streets that provide devious access to the litter-strewn ‘open spaces’ at the rear of the structures. The dirty streets in the whole area swarm with children and adults too, on fair days, since the blessings of sun and light - even in the dusty gusts of air - are preferable to confinement in the squalid buildings." 

– Boston Housing Authority Urban Redevelopment Division, “The New York Streets Project Report,” 1952

Residents remembered, “They told everyone that they had to sell, they had to move, and that was it… They took all of Chinatown. They took Albany Street, Hudson Street. That was half the Chinese community originally. That’s what forced the Lebanese out, the Syrians out, and the Chinese out… The residents and businesses would be served with a notice, a piece of paper either tacked to the door or handed to the resident or business person, giving them sixty days to vacate the premises.”

— Yanni Tsipis, A Chinatown Banquet / Hudson Street Stories; from Forever Struggle by Michael Liu  

Image: New York Streets in the midst of destruction, 1955-57.

Courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.