Oxford Place

Oxford Place, along with the surrounding streets Ping On Alley and Harrison Avenue, holds significance as the earliest area of Chinese settlement in Boston.

The Oxford Place row was constructed in 1843 by housewright Adijah Johnson and designed by Gridley James Fox Bryant, a prominent Boston architect who was also responsible for Chinatown's Quincy Grammar School and the Old City Hall. The streetscape of Oxford Place today has changed very little since the 1800s.

Working-class Irish, Italian, Jewish, Syrian, and Chinese immigrants were initially attracted to this area for its low rents, near the railway yards. The area served as a practical point of entry due to its proximity to South Station and the Pearl Street Telephone Exchange, which facilitated transportation and job opportunities. The streets surrounding Oxford Place contain many of Chinatown’s earliest Chinese-owned businesses, including laundries, stores, and restaurants. 

In the 20th century, Oxford Place became a special place for Chinatown’s children because it was too narrow for car traffic. “We just took balls and bounced them off the walls. We’d do hopscotch there,” Amy Guen, who grew up in Chinatown during this time, recounted. “But it was very clean. Because some families lived there, I think the families, mothers probably, kept the street clean.”

One of the street’s most notable occupants was the late Tunney Lee, former head of the department of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lee would become an architect, teacher, and community leader who dedicated his life to preserving Chinatown’s past, present, and future. He held a strong belief that the fields of architecture and urban planning should first and foremost consider and enhance the lives of the working class communities who inhabit the actual space of the city. 

Tunney Lee recalled growing up at 5 Oxford Place and playing stickball in the alley with his friends. He described the conditions as impoverished but happy. “They were built as tenements. And they had very little in the way of amenities. On the other hand they cost fifteen dollars a month.” Whole families would sleep in one room. Some had flushing toilets for the first time. But the aromas of home cooking mingled with those of the Tai Lee noodle company which sat at the end of the alley. 

Lee emigrated to Boston in 1938 at the age of 7, and lived on 5 Oxford Place as a small child. His upbringing in the neighborhood had immense influence on him and would determine the course his education and work would take. “[Chinatown] was a classic urban village, one in which people knew each other and trusted each other, and it was small,” he said. “It has certainly affected, always, my views of community, of neighborhoods. It extends all the way to my professional life; my interest in neighborhoods has always been there.”

Contributors Mae Carroll, Sophia Comparato, Maddie Cunniff, Chelsea Lee, Lydia Lowe, and Daphne Xu