Editing Chinatown, Manhattan (section)

===Ah Ken and early Chinese immigration===
{{Main|Ah Ken}}
{{US Census population
| 1990 = 51439
| 2000 = 59320
| 2010 = 52613
| footnote = Asian American population<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://aaldef.org/Chinatown%20Then%20and%20Now%20AALDEF.pdf|title=Chinatown Then and Now|access-date=March 23, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150812204205/http://aaldef.org/Chinatown%20Then%20and%20Now%20AALDEF.pdf|archive-date=August 12, 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref>
}}

[[Ah Ken]] is claimed to have arrived in the area during the 1850s; he is the first Chinese person credited as having permanently immigrated to Chinatown. As a Cantonese businessman, Ah Ken eventually founded a successful [[cigar]] store on [[Park Row (Manhattan)|Park Row]].<ref name="Moss">Moss, Frank. ''The American Metropolis from Knickerbocker Days to the Present Time''. London: The Authors' Syndicate, 1897. (pg. 403)</ref><ref name="Harlow">Harlow, Alvin F. ''Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street''. New York and London: D. Appleton & Company, 1931. (pg. 392)</ref><ref name="Hemp">Hemp, William H. ''New York Enclaves''. New York: Clarkson M. Potter, 1975. (pg. 6) {{ISBN|0-517-51999-2}}</ref><ref>
* [[Herbert Asbury|Asbury, Herbert]]. ''The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the New York Underworld''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. (pg. 278–279) {{ISBN|1-56025-275-8}}
* Worden, Helen. ''The Real New York: A Guide for the Adventurous Shopper, the Exploratory Eater and the Know-it-all Sightseer who Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet''. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932. (pg. 140)
* Wong, Bernard. ''Patronage, Brokerage, Entrepreneurship, and the Chinese Community of New York''. New York: AMS Press, 1988. (pg. 31) {{ISBN|0-404-19416-8}}
* Lin, Jan. ''Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclave, Global Change''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. (pg. 30–31) {{ISBN|0-8166-2905-6}}
* Taylor, B. Kim. ''The Great New York City Trivia & Fact Book''. Nashville: Cumberland House Publishing, 1998. (pg. 20) {{ISBN|1-888952-77-6}}
* Ostrow, Daniel. ''Manhattan's Chinatown''. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2008. (pg. 9) {{ISBN|0-7385-5517-7}}</ref> He first arrived around 1858 in New York City, where he was "probably one of those Chinese mentioned in gossip of the sixties [1860s] as peddling 'awful' cigars at three cents apiece from little stands along the [[New York City Hall|City Hall]] park fence&nbsp;– offering a paper spill and a tiny [[oil lamp]] as a lighter", according to author [[Alvin F. Harlow|Alvin Harlow]] in ''Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street'' (1931).<ref name="Harlow"/>

In the 1850s, the [[California Gold Rush]] brought a wave of Chinese immigration to the United States. Approximately 25,000 Chinese immigrants left their homes in search for ''gam saan'' ("gold mountain") in California.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Chinese – Searching for the Gold Mountain – Immigration...- Classroom Presentation {{!}} Teacher Resources|url=https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/chinese2.html|access-date=July 20, 2020|website=Library of Congress|archive-date=February 23, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200223185138/http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/chinese2.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In New York, immigrants found work as "cigar men" or carrying [[billboard]]s, and Ah Ken's particular success encouraged cigar makers William Longford, John Occoo, and John Ava to also ply their trade in Chinatown, eventually forming a [[monopoly]] on the cigar trade.<ref>Tchen, John Kuo Wei. ''New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776–1882''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. (pg. 82–83) {{ISBN|0-8018-6794-0}}</ref> It has been speculated that it may have been Ah Ken who kept a small [[boarding house]] on lower [[Mott Street (Manhattan)|Mott Street]] and rented out [[bunk bed|bunks]] to the first Chinese immigrants to arrive in Chinatown. It was with the profits he earned as a landlord, earning an average of $100 per month, that he was able to open his Park Row smoke shop around which modern-day Chinatown would grow.<ref name="Moss"/><ref name="Hemp"/><ref name="FWP">Federal Writers' Project. ''New York City: Vol 1, New York City Guide''. Vol. I. American Guide Series. New York: Random House,
1939. (pg. 104)</ref><ref>
* Marcuse, Maxwell F. ''This Was New York!: A Nostalgic Picture of Gotham in the Gaslight Era''. New York: LIM Press, 1969. (pg. 41)
* Chen, Jack. ''The Chinese of America''. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. (pg. 258) {{ISBN|0-06-250140-2}}
* Hall, Bruce Edward. ''Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown''. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. (pg. 37) {{ISBN|0-7432-3659-9}}</ref>