Gateway to Hope and Heartache

By Andrew Ryan | The Boston Globe | Apr. 11, 2010

First a point of entry for immigrants, later a makeshift prison, this East Boston building is slated to be razed

Tunney Lee arrived in America on a dreary day in 1938, a 7-year-old at the railing of a steamship gazing up at the Custom House Tower, an ivory-colored beacon soaring above Boston.

If seeing the city’s tallest skyscraper filled Lee with hope, a low-slung building on an East Boston wharf reminded him who he was: a boy, just 3 feet 9 inches, emigrating from China, the target of America’s strictest immigration quotas. After a 59-question interrogation by immigration officers, he signed his name with an X.

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