Dave Newbart staff reported (Sun-times, June 19), Chicago Field Museum archeologist Scott Demel unearths outside the museum's door fragments of ornate ceramics and decorated glass. Some of the artifacts are estimated nearly a century old. The items were dumped in landfills and later carted to the lakefront. The museum, which was built on top of the fill, was finished in 1921.
There are items from closed restaurants including the Boston Oyster House and what appears to be a sugar bowl from the King Joy Lo Mandarin Restaurant, one of Chicago's first Chinese restaurants. The piece, made in Germany in 1911, is the earliest known three-dimensional artifact that shows Asian-American presence in the region, said Chuimei Ho, an adjunct curator at the Field Museum and the president of the Chinatown Museum Foundation.