Chinatown on Empire

Chinatown on Empire. Westminster Street. , Look around you. Along the west side of Empire Street, where you can see a small park and office building today, you would have found the center of Providence's Chinese community, who settled in tenements here in the 1890s., Although Chinese residents of the neighborhood numbered only in the dozens, these men (there were very few women in this community), established grocery and supply businesses as well as eateries that attracted many of their countrymen, especially on weekends. For years, the street also served as a site of annual celebration-a night of firecrackers, and music remembered regularly in the pages of the Providence Journal., When Empire Street was widened and extended in 1915, the Chinese community moved to Warners Lane (now a small street on the other side of I-95), where it remained until the late 1950s. Today, Empire Street is best known as a destination for arts and cultural activity.