Museum report·New York
$184M Rebuild Begins for Fire-Damaged 70 Mulberry Street, Home to a New Jennifer Wen Ma Public Artwork
Mayor Zohran Mamdani broke ground on November 9 on the $184 million reconstruction of 70 Mulberry Street, the 1892 Chinatown building gutted by a 2020 fire. Due for completion in 2030, it will rehouse five community groups including the Museum of Chinese in America and feature Jennifer Wen Ma's permanent Percent for Art installation.
On Monday, November 9, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined the commissioners for design and construction, citywide administrative services and cultural affairs to break ground on the $184 million reconstruction of 70 Mulberry Street, a landmarked 1892 building in Chinatown that was gutted by a fire in 2020. The project will restore the former Public School 23 as a community hub, with completion expected in 2030.
Five community organisations that operated in the building before the fire will return or gain expanded space, including the Museum of Chinese in America, which kept its archive and research library at 70 Mulberry Street after moving its main galleries to Centre Street in 2009. Most of the museum's 85,000-item collection was salvaged from the fire. Designed by Grimshaw Architects, the new building preserves traces of the original structure while adding about 30 percent more public space and rising three floors higher, with six community rooms, multipurpose areas and outdoor spaces.
The rebuilding also carries a public artwork. Artist Jennifer Wen Ma has created "Wings of Everchange", a three-part installation commissioned through the city's Percent for Art programme, which directs one percent of eligible city construction funds to public art. The centrepiece, a sculpture in the atrium modelled on the brushstrokes of Chinese calligraphy, incorporates salvaged material from the 2020 fire, with glass orbs serving as time capsules for people and groups connected to the building. Ink paintings on glass will wind up the spiral stairwell, and Ma plans a website and app carrying oral histories from 70 community members.
The city's Public Design Commission unanimously approved Ma's design in January 2024. "Our community has gone through so many challenges and changes," Ma said in a statement. "I set out to make a work that would embrace these changes, honoring our history, anchoring us in the present and taking us soaring into the future." The project has not been without controversy: the museum has faced protests since accepting a $35 million city capital grant in 2019 tied to the construction of a Chinatown jail, with demonstrators in July condemning museum leaders.
