Inspired by the civil rights movement, two young Chinese-American New Yorkers more than 25 years ago began attempting to coax Chinatown residents into sharing their stories. The pair was met with suspicion and was told to go away.

“They thought we were with immigration or the IRS or the FBI,” one of the activists, Charles Lai, said in recalling the frustrations of their early efforts. If trust could be established, he said, another obstacle would often arise: The laundry pressers and restaurant workers did not think they had a story to share. “Who wants to say, ‘I hustle and I work 18 hours a day?'” he said.

These days, Mr. Lai, who went on to co-found Chinatown’s Museum of Chinese in the Americas, has a far different problem – he does not have enough space to house all the artifacts, memorabilia, and oral testimonies donated to him. The small second-story museum on Mulberry Street, with exhibition space comprising two rooms that at one time were part of a public school, is packed to the brim. What is not on display – from Chinatown Boy Scout troop documents to colorful opera banners to a 600-pound dry cleaning press – is packed in storage rooms, where the boxes lining the walls reach to the ceiling.

That should soon change. The museum recently signed a 15-year lease for a space five times its current size on Lafayette Avenue near Canal Street. The move was made possible in large part by a $2 million boost from the city Department of Cultural Affairs. The new structure will be designed by Maya Lin, the Chinese-American architect who is most famous for creating the design for the Vietnam War Memorial as a 21-year-old Yale University senior.

Ms. Lin focuses on embedding meaning in simple, functional structures, and Mr. Lai expects her design to aid the museum in its mission of writing the Chinese-American story into American history. Like the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, he said he wants his institution to generate increased reflection on regional and national Chinese-American history and identity. “The American story is missing this very significant chapter,” he said. “Twenty-six years later, we still recognize the story continues to need to be fleshed out.”

Ms. Lin, a longtime supporter of the museum, has offered her services at a special rate, but the institution is still more than $2 million short of its goal of raising $6.5 million for the move.

Although the museum has tackled dozens of topics, from Chinese-American nightclub stars to immigrant smugglers, its first exhibit is among those that Mr. Lai is proudest of. He said the 1980 exhibit on Chinese laundry workers, called “Eight Pound Livelihood,” was the first time he sensed the museum had succeeded at tackling its mission of preserving and exploring Chinatown’s legacy. Not only did it document the classic American immigrant story of how the first generation’s backbreaking work “allowed people like me to do what I’m able to do,” but the workers themselves came to see the exhibit. From being hesitant to share their stories, he said, they were amazed to see that they had “a critical place in history.”

The other founder of the museum, John Kuo Wei Tchen, now the director of the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, said he feels the significance of the museum’s mission is even greater today than when it was begun in the late 1970s.

When the two young activists – who met in 1976 at the Basement Workshop, the first Asian-American cultural organization in New York and a gathering space for a new generation of community leaders – set out on their project to document Chinatown’s living history, such social documentation was just emerging. On the heels of the civil rights movement, they were part of a wave of grassroots efforts across the country, “where regular people’s stories became important, and whole realms of history, social history, became important,” he said.

Today, such documentation is widespread, but Chinatown, Asia, and America have changed. The Chinese-American community is no longer restricted to certain jobs and neighborhoods. It is now much more diverse, and more integrated into New York’s cultural milieu. “I don’t think the older Chinatown is coming back,” he said, “but I think there’s a larger role it can play in the life of the city.”

With many Americans unaware of Asia despite China’s new prominence in the global economy, Mr. Tchen said he envisions the museum as a bridge between New York and Asia. “Americans are not really aware of how quickly things are developing in Asia,” he said. The role of the museum is more than just educating about “the poor Chinese immigrants,” he said. “It’s also about the future of the city and how New Yorkers can understand how the world is changing.”