Location: 5-7 Doyers Street
Status: Standing
Not so much as the faintest outline of a smile crossed the lips of the stone faced killers of the Hip Sing Tong as they strutted through the fog of cigarette smoke clogging the aisles of the old Chinese Theater.
Reverberating gongs and humming Chinese fiddles cut through the gasping audience who had no idea that they were about to become part of a massacre in the unlikeliest of places. The Chinese Theater was one of the few neutral territories in New York’s Chinatown and according to the New York Sun:
…the Chinese Theater has been neutral ground, and no matter how many fights and gunplays…it was always safe for all Tong men to go to the theater and burry the hatchet while watching the show. (Click here to read the article)
The Chinese Theater was the site of an On Leong Massacre.
Flash and Fire
Suddenly, a Hip Sing gunman pressed the glowing end of a cigarette to a fuse attached to a thick rope of firecrackers. White smoke and sparks hissed from the fuse, as the hatchet-man hurled the detonating explosives into the crowd.
The crackling blasts were a signal for the Hip Sing gunmen to open fire. Pulling revolvers from their brown cloaks, the boo how doy, or Tong hitmen, started pumping bullets into the designated seating area of the rival On Leon Tong.
Bullets ripped through the On Leongs. Blood splashed the elaborate Chinese murals on the walls, and by the time Patrolman John Young entered the empty, burning theater, Lee Yuck, Yu Yuck, Ong Smg, and We Yu Sing, all members of the On Leong Tong, were dead.
The Chinese Theater on Doyers Street remained neutral ground in the Tong Wars until the Hip Sings attacked the rival On Leongs on August 7th, 1905.
The Scientific Killer
Mock Duck, the leader of the Hip Sings, placed himself in a police precinct at the time of the shooting for an unusual alibi.
The Chinese Theater Massacre was the work of Sing “The Scientific Killer” Dock, a veteran Tong-warrior imported from the Wild West by Hip Sing headman, Mock Duck to engineer the massacre on August 7th of 1905.
Realizing that Mock Duck would be fingered for the crime, the Tong leader set up the perfect alibi. According to Newspaper reporter Bruce Grant and former Tong headman Eddie Eng Ying Gong’s book Tong War!:
The first person the police thought of as responsible for this wholesale shooting was Mock Duck… They found him at the police station, arguing with the precinct Captain for locking up some men found gambling in his store… [and] The Captain had to admit that Mock Duck was there when the shooting was reported…
The crime was never solved.
The Chinese Theater today.
Infamous New York 