Poy Gum Lee


Poy Gum Lee also known as Poy Lee, Lee Poy Gum and Li Jinpei was a Chinese-American architect. Known for his Art Deco buildings with Chinese architectural influence or "Chinese Deco", many of which were located in Shanghai and Chinatown in New York City.

Biography

Born January 1900, the eldest of 15 children to Cantonese parents Lee Yick Dep and Ng Lan Yin. He grew up at 32 Mott Street above the family store in the Chinatown neighborhood in New York City. During World War I, he served with the United States Army. He attended Pratt Institute, graduating in 1920 in Architecture. Lee took architecture extension classes at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1921 and later at Columbia University in 1922.
By 1923, Lee and his family moved to China where he worked on various architecture projects and earned him admiration for his work. In 1926 he married Pansy Choye in Shanghai. He worked as an architect in China for 25 years. Hired by the Young Men’s Christian Association’s China Building Bureau, he worked on 11 buildings for the YMCA and YWCA in China and also working on the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
During World War II, the Japanese seized his home in Shanghai and left his family impoverished. After the war, with his wife and three children moved to the United States. He worked primarily in Chinatown in New York after his return to the U.S. and worked with the New York City Housing Authority. Some of the postwar projects he worked on included; Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association building in New York City, On Leong Tong Merchant’s Association building, Kimlau Memorial Arch - a Chinese American WWII Monument in Kimlau Square, and Pagoda Theatre.
He died on March 24, 1968 in Bakersfield, California at the age of 68.