Lee Insurance celebrates 125th year in New York
It is rare that an independent insurance agency makes it into a Museum, but
Harold Lee and Sons is itself a rarity.
To mark its 125th Anniversary and to
establish its place as a cornerstone in the
enabling of Chinese American commerce,
The Museum of Chinese in America
mounted a new exhibition exploring the
legacy of the agency's founding family -
"The Lee Family of New York Chinatown
since 1888", on view from October 23, 2013
through April 13, 2014.
Today, Harold L. Lee and Sons, Inc.,
under the direction of Lee family members
Steve Boon and Sandra Lee Kawano,
serves Chinatown and New York City at
an enviable level, bringing major insurers
to serve the growing community in lower
Manhattan and elsewhere in the City. The
estimated Chinese population in NYC is
better than 800,000 and in Chinatown better
than 100,000. It is a major tourist center
and is comprised of hundreds of businesses
of all types.
From its modest origins as a grocery
store on 31 Pell Street in 1888, the Lee
family business rose to prominence through the decades to become one of the most influential agencies in New York.
Its leaders have played important roles in insurance associations, enterprises and in
the very delivery of insurance to what
started as an immigrant market, across
generations of progress.
"In the course of providing the historical research and documentation for the exhibition, we came to have a much deeper appreciation of our family's history, which is strongly interwoven into Chinatown's development over 125 years. It has been a fascinating journey of discovery for us and we hope others will find it interesting as well," said Sandra Lee Kawano, granddaughter of Harold L. Lee.
Find out more about the Lee family history in Chinatown. Read this PDF, which contains the entire article from the Insurance Advocate.
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