Manhattan's Chinatown, found on the Lower East Side, has been a major center of the city's Chinese community for more than a century, with records of new arrivals setting up shop as early as the mid-19th century. In fact, the neighborhood is known as one of the oldest ethnic Chinese enclaves outside the continent of Asia and such is its significance that the area encompassing it and bordering Little Italy has been designated a historic district on the USA's National Register of Historic Places.