Leather District Neighborhood - Boston, Massachusetts - Close in Proximity and Culture as the Chinatown District

Leather District in Boston, Massachusetts, is a neighborhood near South Street between the Financial District and Chinatown. Leather District or sometimes called "DL'' is a well-defined area bounded by Kneeland Street to the south, Essex Street to the north, Atlantic Avenue to the east and Lincoln Street to the west. It is so named due to the dominance of the leather industry in the past.

Built on a landfill created from tidal flats in 1800 to provide additional housing for the growing population of middle-class Boston, its neighboring Chinatown is home to the largest Chinese community in Boston, and contains a unique blend of family residences owns and operates the business. While the original residents of the area moved outside the area in the 1840s, the influx of immigrants entered, including Chinese, Irish, Italians, Jews and Syrians, who became the area single-family homes to multi-unit dwellings.

Commercial uses, including textiles and leather works, began at the turn of the century with the construction of South Station and the line of Washington Street Trolley. Today, Chinese restaurants and specialty shops fill the ground floor levels of residential buildings.

Chinatown offers excellent local and regional transport. It is served by the MBTA Red Line, Silver Line and Commuter Rail station in the south and the Orange Line station in Chinatown. Interstate 93 and the Massachusetts Turnpike are close behind. Two Chinese-owned bus services (Fung Wah and Lucky Star / Travel pack) provide hourly connections with New York's Chinatown.

Tufts Medical Center overlooks part of the area and includes a full-service hospital and health facility associated with various schools including Tufts University, Tufts University School of Medicine, Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine.

In addition, South Cove Community Health Center Chinatown Clinic operates at 885 Washington Avenue. South Cove volunteers founded it in 1972, to provide better health care for Asian Americans in the Chinatown area.

The Leather District is now a small but growing sub-district of Chinatown. Located between Dewey Square and Kneeland Street, the Leather District is a nine-block area with known structures of its 19th century brick warehouse memoirs. These historic buildings were built mainly during the 1880s, with a design focused on efficient and economical manufacture. The leather industry and wholesalers related to the space required for display, offices and work areas, therefore, huge, ground-floor windows screen don these buildings, located in rugged cast iron columns - a unique signature of the District leather.

In the years between 1980 and 1990, the District has grown as a mixed-use area, occupied by a variety of commercial and residential tenants. This is a popular district due in part to its diversity and that of its surrounding neighborhoods as well as the reasonably priced housing.