![]() ![]() The artifacts documented the variety of Chinese immigrant life in New York and around the United States. The old location then became storage space. The original museum was established in 1980, but in 2009 the exhibition space moved to the Centre Street location, designed by Maya Lin, the architect of the Vietnam War Veterans’ memorial in Washington DC. The Mulberry Street building not only housed the MOCA archives, it also served as a vibrant community center for Chinatown residents, providing a home for the local Athletics Association and the Chen Dance Center. Recovery is urgent since further damage is certain unless artifacts are removed and treated. The city, MOCA believes, was dilatory in permitting such efforts. In the face of the scheduled protest, however, the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) pledged February 27 to allow the recovery of parts of MOCA’s collection beginning March 3. ![]() Hyperallergic reports that MOCA “had originally planned to stage a march-starting from its main museum space at 215 Centre Street and ending with a rally at 70 Mulberry Street-… to put pressure on the city to keep the MOCA collections ‘at the highest priority.’” In fact, the only “high priority” item for New York City officials is the maintenance of stock market prices and real estate values. Maasbach told Hyperallergic, according to the website, that “weeks of inaction since the city’s pledge in January to assist with the recovery of the items made her grow ‘a little anxious.’” Only 200 boxes have so far been recovered. ![]() In the weeks following the fire, museum officials became concerned as the thousands of items remained stranded in the Mulberry Street building. Only about 40,000 of the items had been catalogued and digitized. And we have this signage from early restaurants and laundromats in Chinatown and these things are just priceless.” The collection was built up over 40 years. We have all the movie posters from the theaters that used to be in Chinatown that no longer exist, the ticket stubs from those things. I mean, these things are not easily acquired. There was just an endless list of priceless family albums, postcards from Chinatown from the early 1900s. There's dresses-traditional Chinese dresses, cheongsams from the turn of the century. The museum’s president Nancy Yao Maasbach told the Gothamist that the archives included “old iron heating metal components that are from hand laundries. Museum officials initially believed that most, if not all of the collection had been destroyed. While the archives were located on the second floor, which the flames never reached, the water damage was extensive. Two hundred firefighters battled the blaze for over 24 hours. ![]() Nine firefighters and one civilian were injured. on the upper floors of the five-story, 125-year-old building at 70 Mulberry Street, leading to the roof eventually collapsing. The museum itself relocated to another space more than a decade ago.Īccording to media reports, the fire broke out around 9 p.m. The archives stored some 85,000 artifacts, photos, memorabilia, documents, oral histories and artwork documenting Chinese communities in America. On the night of January 23, a fire broke out in the archives of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in Manhattan, causing major damage. ![]()
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