The site of what is now the Metropolitan apartment complex on Oak Street in Boston has been at the heart of community life in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood for nearly a century. A hub for the city’s immigrants, it was a seat of activism in the 1950s and ’60s against large-scale urban renewal projects that wiped out sections of many immigrant neighborhoods across the city.
“This building exists because of the community fighting back,” says Suzanne Lee, a longtime resident and organizer. When the first interstate highway through Boston, I-93, was set to be built in the late 1950s and early ’60s, Chinatown organizers negotiated to re-route the highway in order to save key buildings. “They were going to build a taxi [depot] here. We’ve been dealing with this for years,” Lee says.
