Quong Yuen Shing & Co. (32 Mott Street General Store)

32 Mott Street | Chinatown | built 1910

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1897
Louis Heinecke designs a dumbbell tenement at 32 Mott Street
Architect Louis Heinecke designed the building at 32 Mott Street in 1897 as an old-law dumbbell tenement of brick and terra cotta. Two years later, in 1899, the general store Quong Yuen Shing and Company moved into the storefront. It stood between Pell Street and Chatham Square, at the geographic heart of young Chinatown.
Source: Internet Archive
1899
Quong Yuen Shing store serves as bank, bunkhouse and post office for Chinatown's bachelors
When Quong Yuen Shing and Company moved into 32 Mott Street in 1899, it sold silks and satins as well as vegetables, herbs and supplies for laundries and restaurants. For the neighborhood's single male workers it did more: sleeping lofts, storeroom safes that worked as an informal bank, and a wire rack that held mail from home.
“…the general store known as Quong Yuen Shing on the ground floor of a tenement building at 32 Mott Street…”
Source: National Register nomination
2003
Chinatown's longest-running store closes after losing half its business following 9/11
Founded in 1891 by Lee Lok, Quong Yuen Shing ran for more than a century and kept much of its original interior. After the September 11 attacks, owner Paul J.Q. Lee lost over half his revenue and fell behind on rent. City marshals evicted him in 2003, and the space reopened as a shop selling tourist goods. The Museum of Chinese in America saved the store's sign.
Source: mocanyc.org

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