Chinatown - 6 Hudson Street

The 6 Hudson Street home was occupied by multiple American-born families of English ancestry until the 1870s. At that time, it became a boarding house for Irish immigrants moving to Boston.

At the end of the 19th century, Syrian immigrants fleeing war began to move into the neighborhood. They transformed the South Cove neighborhood into Syriatown. The first Syrian family moved into 6 Hudson Street in 1899. The first floor of the building included a Syrian-owned grocery store.

In the early 1900s, Chinese immigrants formed a small Chinatown near the corner of Harrison and Beach streets. As Chinatown expanded and moved south, the first Chinese immigrant moved into 6 Hudson in 1920.  In 1921, entrepreneur Ruby Foo opened Ruby Foo's Den in the building, a popular Chinese food restaurant with celebrity clientele. It remained open until the 1950s. 

6 Hudson Street was demolished in 1989.     A history of 6 Hudson Street can be found in the background history document at the bottom of this page.  You can also find more information on the history of Chinatown online.

Before the archaeologists could excavate deeper, the excavations reached the water table at six feet deep, and the site began to flood.  The dig was then ended as the crew were unable to dig a submerged site.

It is possible for the dig to continue someday in the future. The best time to continue the dig is when the foundations for a future building are excavated and plans made to pump the water from the site are made. 

The archaeological dig at 6 Hudson Street recovered 1,699 artifacts. The vast majority of these artifacts date to the 1980s, when the home was demolished. Many artifacts from the house mixed into the demolition debris.  Earlier artifacts, including historic ceramics, provide hits of the possible deposits remaining on the site below the water table.

Though not very old, the artifacts recovered from the site represent the daily lives of the Chinatown residents of the home during this period of Boston's history. For example, we know they used a pic to style their hair. They listened to the 1984 self-titled album of Boston's own New Edition on cassette. They ate at local restaurants, celebrated their Chinese heritage through decorations, food, and clothing, and their kids played with dinosaur toys in the yard.

A spreadsheet of the complete 6 Hudson Street artifact catalog is linked to at the bottom of this page.  You can also find a link there to our Omeka-based artifact image database, featuring photos of every artifact excavated at the site.  A full analysis of the artifacts is ongoing. The final results of this analysis and a final report on the dig will be included on this page in the near future.

The artifacts of 6 Hudson street appear to be general rubbish from the 1980s. But, that is exactly the types of artifacts archaeologists excavate at sites throughout the world.  Archaeology is often the study of human history by examining people's trash.