It’s 3pm at the East Broadway Mall in Chinatown
Liminal spaces, architecturally, are defined as “the physical spaces between one destination to the next.” The site of a (lightly religious?) life coaching group out of Edmonds, Washington quoted a Franciscan friar explaining emotional liminality: “There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible.” This is a nice idea! Also, an aesthetics wiki describes it as “frozen” and “slightly unsettling, but also familiar to our minds.”
Anyhow, the East Broadway Mall is one of the coolest malls to have existed. This is, first things first, because it’s built like a secret under the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown. It is also experiencing a state of pure liminality. Walking in just after 3 p.m. — or probably any time of day — you’ll be one of only a few non-employees in this mall. There are about five businesses open: a hair salon and a smattering of others whose services I can’t quite discern. Most any sign in the mall is in Chinese, other than the silver ’80s-office “East Broadway Mall Inc” on the outside. It’s so quiet that shop owners sit outside their shops chatting with each other.
Terry, the mall’s property manager, told me earlier in the summer that the pandemic had cleared this mall out. Nearly all of the storefronts have gray shutters pulled down; some of them look like the tenant half-expected to come back. Unit #B12 has a sign asking FedEx to leave packages with their neighbor #B30. The mall’s pièce de résistance, dim sum banquet hall 88 Palace, closed in 2020. A mirrored staircase leads up to the darkened hall, a restaurant that also used to be an after-hours club.
This mall is not an Auntie Anne’s-and-PacSun situation. No glossy chains, just small businesses. One place offered “commercial printing, audio & visual solutions, business formation & consulting, real estate finance, licensed travel agency.” (They did it all!) The stores, particularly in the basement, are narrow, some not much bigger than a walk-in closet in a Dallas suburb. Second to being an under-a-bridge secret, small store size is this mall’s second most alluring feature. People like intimacy and tiny things to unpack inside larger entities.
Some of the businesses still have equipment in them, like this one with a toy vending machine, a red basket, and a plastic box of toys. Another store is papered over with Applebee’s VIP New Year’s Eve 2017 party advertisements. One shop in the basement has two parakeets in a cage outside of it; a woman stands behind the counter and a man in a blue puffer coat sits across from her on his phone. Earlier this summer, Terry the Property Manager talked about a psychic who had become a minor celebrity after correctly predicting the death of a woman visiting him from Connecticut. His storefront drew a crowd, but he has since gone somewhere else.
The East Broadway Mall was, of course, once more alive. On Reddit, one person wrote that it was the hub of its community throughout the ’90s and early 2000s. (There was also a thrilling comment gossiping about underground boxing matches that happened after hours!) A New York architect wrote about the function the East Broadway Mall has served within Chinatown’s Fuzhounese community.
The East Broadway mall is a prime location for an observer to see some of the separate systems that exists in parallel to the greater NYC systems. From this vantage point in the epicenter of the Fuzhounese community several enterprises become apparent. These functions include remittances back to China, informal banking, loan paying, socializing, and social networking.
One business I walked by, closed with gauzy white curtains over the windows, offered “commercial printing, audio & visual solutions, business formation & consulting, real estate finance, licensed travel agency.” (This place did it all!) The best dumplings I’ve had are in the basement at Wei Zhong Wei, where it was me and three other diners all wearing our AirPods and eating quietly. Recent news says that the mall is going to be converted into a theater with streetside retail remaining. This sounds cool in some ways but also kind of sad. Theater is an event whereas this local mall is everyday life. The East Broadway Mall doesn’t feel like mine to miss — I’m just someone who hopped in last minute — but I could not love every inch of its tiled, mirrored fluorescence more. If only it could pull a Juneau, Alaska in its transition out of liminality!
Get some dumplings and walk around, there is also a window-display gallery with an exhibit that changes each month. Currently it’s 23 gray balls stacked on top of each other. I love you, East Broadway Mall!
June 13, 2019
In "Features"
