Official languages

[5–9 Mulberry Street, Chinatown, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

We find ourselves this morning in Manhattan’s Chinatown, not far from Little Italy. The arrow points to Mulberry Street addresses, but what interests me in this photograph is the building on the corner of Worth and Mulberry Streets. Now that the idea of an “official language” is in the air, I hereby proclaim the official languages of that corner Chinese, English, and Italian. The Italian words on the sign for the Kwong Sang Co. — Vendita di Galline Vive — almost translate themselves. The Chinese, for me, is more of a mystery. The first character is beyond me. The second character appears to signify not chicken but goose :

鵝

The third character has numerous possibilities, including living, raw, and uncooked :

生

The fourth character, if I’m seeing it correctly, seems to have something to do with size (big) or Canton Province :

廣

But all four characters are beyond me.

Kwong Sang, by the way, was the name of a nineteenth-century painter. And Kwong Sang Hong is the name of a Hong Kong cosmetics company, founded in 1898 and still going.

Today, the building on this corner stands, occupied, at least in part, by the True Light Lutheran Church. A crucifix, imaged in recessed brick, stands where the signage once stood. The buildings to which the arrow pointed are gone.

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