“The Lee Family of New York Chinatown Since 1888” Exhibition
The Museum of Chinese in America
This event has ended.
Founded in 1888, Harold L. Lee and Sons, Inc. is a cornerstone of Chinatown. The business is named after Lee Lun (who took the American name Harold), the son of Lee Kee Lo who came to the United States as a merchant in 1888 when Chinatown consisted of three streets: Mott, Pell and Doyers. Lee Kee Lo founded his company, Tai Lung (or Great Prosperity), with his two brothers on 31 Pell Street where today the family operates an insurance company.
The year 2013 will mark its 125th anniversary. MOCA, which honored CEO Sandra Lee, Harold’s granddaughter, in its Festival of Community heroes, will present a selection of photographs and artifacts from the business, tracing its rise from a small foreign exchange business to national insurance brokerage. The exhibition will take place in MOCA’s recreated general store, a space fashioned to represent an old New York storefront with tin ceilings, built-in wooden cabinets, and brick walls.
Through vintage photographs, original artifacts, and other ephemera from the family’s primary businesses in its 125 year history (curio shop, foreign currency exchange, travel agency, movie theater and insurance agency), the exhibition will describe the unique journeys of the Lee family, their businesses and New York’s Chinatown. And by seeing Chinatown through the Lee family history, it hopes to tell the story of how small businesses are part of an essential social and economic ecosystem that sustain communities like Chinatown.
Media
Schedule
from October 23, 2013 to July 06, 2014