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Poy Gum Lee Walking Tour
Architect Poy Gum Lee was born in New York’s Chinatown at the turn of the twentieth century. After working in China for the YMCA and starting his own firm, Lee became well known for his Chinese Modern and Art Deco-inflected public and private commissions. By 1946, Lee was engaged in a busy private practice in New York, primarily in Chinatown, where Lee felt he could best be “of service to [his] Chinese people.”
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10 stops•0m•0 min
215 Park Row
This location was used by Poy Gum Lee as his office.
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13 Mott Street
Poy Gum Lee was born at this location on January 14th, 1900. During this time period, Chinatown was confined to only three small streets - Pell, Doyers, and Lower Mott.
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32 Mott Street
In his teens, Poy Gum Lee's family moved here to live above their family store at no. 32.
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Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Building
Lee designed two different iterations of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association between 1946 and 1959, before the commission was awarded to fellow Chinese American architect Andrew S. Yuen. Yuen’s design owes a debt to Lee’s 1959 design, and reflects the Chinese-inflected Modernism that Lee brought to Chinatown from his China practice.
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41 Mott Street
Lee reworked the upper floors of the Lee Family Association, the former On Leong Tong Building at 41 Mott Street.
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83-85 Mott Street
Lee’s design of the On Leong Tong, a boxy modernist block with modest Chinese decorative motifs, was aligned with the new direction he was taking during the 1940s. The most iconic building in Chinatown, the pagoda-topped On Leong Tong building typified Lee’s Chinese modern style—The New York Times described it as being “built along both Chinese and American lines.”
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79 Mott Street
79a Mott Street was a building designed by Poy Gum Lee in 1964
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Wong Family Association
Dating from 1964, the Wong Family Benevolent Association building at 24 Bowery, one of Poy Gum Lee's last commissions, is also his most overtly modern, without any Chinese decorative references.
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Kimlau Square
The gateway memorial was designed by Poy Gum Lee and dedicated to the Chinese-American soldiers that died during World War II. The dedication ceremony occurred on April 28, 1962. The memorial is named after Lieutenant Benjamin Ralph Kimlau, a Chinese-American bomber pilot that died attacking Japanese installations near New Guinea.
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Pagoda Theater
Built between 1963 and 1964, the Pagoda Theater was the last new Lee commission built in New York's Chinatown. The theater was closed and demolished in 1992 and replaced with an office building.
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