San Francisco Chinatown

by Philip P Choy

  American tea clipper Nightingale, breaking through the China coast.

  At the same time, the efforts of the Second Great Awakening that had brought Protestant evangelists to China also hastened the end of the African slave trade, creating a worldwide shortage of cheap labor. The Chinese from Guangdong Province filled this void. American and British ships carried human cargo under wretched conditions throughout Southeast Asia, Cuba, Hawaii, the Chincha Islands in Peru, and Mauritius and Madagascar off the coast of Africa. This same cheap labor was the resource by which California was developed.

  HISTORY

  Present-day Chinatown overlays significant sites from different periods of San Francisco’s history: the Spanish period, the Mexican period, and the American period.

  Spanish Period (1776-1821)

  In 1769, the Spanish government sent Don Gaspar Portola and Father Junipera Serra to claim California for Spain by establishing a system of missions intended to prevent British and Russian intrusion. British and Russian interest in California had been triggered by the successful voyage of Captain James Cook into the South Seas, when the crew discovered the tremendous profits to be made from selling fur in Canton. Along the Pacific Coast, sea otter was found in abundance, and the skin of a mature otter brought a price as high as three hundred dollars. In the late 18th century, when New England merchants learned of this lucrative market, American interest in California began.

  On June 17, 1776, Lt. Jose Joaquin Moraga of Spain led an expedition of soldiers and their families to the San Francisco Bay Area. They established the Presidio on September 17th and the Mission Dolores on October 9th. Lt. Moraga took charge of the Presidio and Father Francisco Palou and Father Cambon were responsible for the Mission. For decades the only social life was between families at the Mission and Presidio, together known as “Yerba Buena” from the herb of that name that grew along the road between the settlements. Except for occasional sailors from ships anchored on the bay for supplies, there was little connection to the outside world.

  Mexican Period (1821-1848)

  In 1821, General Augustin de Iturbide declared Mexico’s independence from Spain and California entered a period of Mexican rule. A year later, the British whaler Orion sailed into San Francisco Bay. While on shore, members of the crew enjoyed the hospitality of Ignazio Martinez and the families at the Presidio. When the Orion sailed off, Chief Mate William A. Richardson remained behind. Whether Richardson deserted the ship because of Maria Antonia, whom he met during the festivities, is not known, but three years later they were married. Richardson became a Mexican citizen and, because of his knowledge of navigation, he was appointed harbormaster and granted a plot of land. In 1832, he built an adobe house for his family, fronting the west side of Calle de la Fondacion (now 823 Grant Avenue). One year later, in December 1833, Jacob Leese, an American who came to California from Ohio, built a house on the same road, two hundred feet south of Richardson (now the southwest corner of Clay and Grant). Like Richardson, Leese became a Mexican citizen and married a Spanish lady, the sister of Salvador Vallejo.

  The families of Richardson and Leese were the only households between the Mission and Presidio. Reminiscing on his trip entering the Bay, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., the author of Two Years Before the Mast wrote: “It was in the winter of 1835-36 that the ship Alert in prosecution of her voyage for hides on the remote and almost unknown coast of California, floated into the vast solitude of the bay of San Francisco; all around was stillness of nature.” That “stillness of nature” would be interrupted forever in the next decade when America became interested in annexation of California and when gold was discovered on the American River.

  American Period (1846-Present)

  A half-century of contact with California—originating with the sea otter trade among Boston, California, and Canton, and followed by the New England hide and tallow trade—laid the foundation for American interest in California and sparked American expansion westward as her Manifest Destiny. Both President Andrew Jackson and President John Tyler saw the importance of annexing California, not only for its desirable ports for whaling vessels but also for the potential dominance of trade across the Pacific.

  When President James K. Polk assumed office in March 1845, he was determined to annex California either by purchase, by encouraging California to revolt against Mexican rule, or as a last resort, by war with Mexico. War it was! On July 7, 1846 Commodore John D. Sloat raised the United States flag at Montgomery and proclaimed California part of the United States. No one was there to surrender. A message was sent to Captain Montgomery in San Francisco and on July 9, 1846, the American flag was hoisted on the square. John Henry Brown gave this eyewitness account:

  San Francisco, November 1948.

  On the following day, shortly before noon, we heard the fife and the beating of the drum. There was great rejoicing by the few who were in the city, and the small and faithful band were as united as brothers, and their hearts swelled with pure pride and patriotism at the thoughts of being under the protection of the flag of their country. The first person who made his appearance was Captain Watson of the marines, with his company of soldiers. The next in command was the First Lieutenant of the Portsmouth. He was followed by Lieutenant Revere’s two Mid-shipmen, and about a dozen sailors. They all marched up Clay Street to Kearny, and thence to the Old Mexican flag pole in front of the Adobe House, used as a Custom House. This being an important event in the History of San Francisco, I will give the names of those who witnessed the hoisting of the American Flag: Captain Leidsoff, John Finch, Joseph Thompson, Mrs. Robert T. Ridley, Mrs. Andrew Hepner, Mrs. Captain Voight, Richard the Third, and John H. Brown.

  San Francisco, November 1949.

  The war ended on February 2, 1848, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The terms of the treaty called for the United States to annex the territories of California and Texas in exchange for a $15-million payment to Mexico. Nine days earlier, on January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall had discovered gold on the American River, but California now belonged to the United States.

  Marshall had contracted with John A. Sutter to build a sawmill at Coloma and while inspecting the work, discovered particles of gold in the riverbed. After ascertaining the specimens were actually gold, Marshall and Sutter agreed to keep the discovery a secret. But their efforts to keep the news from spreading proved impossible. When Samuel Brannan, who ran a general store at Sutter Fort, learned of the discovery, he quietly cornered the market on every type of mining equipment and then on May 12, 1848, appeared excitedly at Portsmouth Square shouting: “Gold! gold! from the American River!” The secret was out and the world rushed in.

  San Francisco emerged from a sleepy trading port of three hundred at the time Marshall discovered gold to a bustling town of two thousand at the beginning of 1849; by the end of that year, the population had exploded to over 25,000. People of all occupations, professions, colors, and creeds mingled at the Square, gambling and drinking at surrounding saloons. While legendary bartender Professor Jerry Thomas concocted his famous cocktail, “Tom & Jerry” (Asbury 1938, 22), on one side of the Square, Reverend Taylor was preaching his sermon “The Way of the Transgressor Is Hard” on the other. Passersby paid little heed to the preacher as their “way” was to “Little Chile,” the red-light district of the time, or to Madame Ah Toy’s brothel on Clay Street; if the lines were too long, they could go further up the hill to Cora Bell on Pike Street (now Waverly Place).

  It was customary for people to settle within their own ethnic communities. Mexicans, Peruvians, and Chileans settled in “Little Chile” on the northern end of Kearny at the foot of Pacific and Broadway. Germans and French occupied the southern end of Kearny. The Chinese settled on Sacramento Street The Germans formed the German Benevolent Society and the French formed their own French Benevolent Society. Likewise, Chinese coming from different geographic areas around the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong formed their own organizations called hui kuan. Tho
ugh initially rivals, the various hui kuan would eventually band together as the Chinese Six Companies—later known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association—serving an important leadership role in the Chinese community.

  Chinatown Beginnings

  The first known person of Chinese descent to settle in San Francisco was a woman. On February 2, 1848, nine days after Marshall’s discovery of gold, an American merchant, Charles Van Gillespie, and his wife arrived from Hong Kong on the Brig Eagle, with two Chinese male servants and a Chinese maid named Maria Seise. The two men disappeared into the gold fields but Maria stayed with the Gillespies for thirty years. Shortly after the Trinity Episcopal Church was organized on July 22, 1849, Mrs. Sarah Catherine Gillespie and Maria Seise were among the first to be confirmed by Bishop Inghram. The Gillespies settled on the southeast corner of Dupont and Washington Street, where Mrs. Gillespie started the first Sunday school in San Francisco.

  When Mr. Gillespie arrived in San Francisco, he brought a shipment of goods from China. He placed an ad on April 1, 1848, in Sam Brannan’s California Star, and his goods were quickly sold. It was Gillespie’s intention to introduce Chinese laborers as well as goods to the rapidly developing California. The idea was not new. Earlier American merchants had planned to use Chinese laborers in California. In a letter dated October 7, 1837, Nathan Spear in Monterey requested of William C. Little, merchant in the China Trade, to procure for him one carpenter, two shoemakers, one baker, one cook, and one steward from Canton. As the discovery of gold opened the floodgates to immigration and commerce, Chinese immigrants began to fill the need for domestics and laborers in the new frontier. Embarking from the Atlantic States, ships would sail around the Horn of South America, cross the Pacific to Canton, and return carrying hundreds of Chinese laborers and cargoes of Chinese goods. China goods included fancy bedsteads, lounges, chairs with tables and other furniture, silk, shawls, ivory work, and stoneware, enough to supply the burgeoning city. For example, against the wall of the dormitory on the third floor of the J. L. Riddle & Co. store were large China water jars, China washstands and China stone washbasins, and coconut shell dippers (Barry and Patten 1947, 100).

  Imports from China.

  Hundreds of imported Chinese prefabricated wooden houses added to the City’s housing inventory. Bayard Taylor, a journalist for the New York Tribune, reported that at least seventy-five houses imported from Canton were put up by Chinese carpenters. On his way to visit Colonel John C. Fremont in Happy Valley (around Second and Market Streets), Mr. Taylor reported he saw a company of Chinese carpenters putting up the frame of a Canton-made house. Upon arrival, Taylor was greeted by Colonel Fremont in his own Chinese house. Etienne Derbec, a French journalist, reported that the Chinese houses were available in either European or Celestial Empire styles and gave his opinion that they were the prettiest, the best made, and the cheapest local dwellings. In 1851, John Frost, author of Pictorial History of California, wrote that these houses “were infinitely superior and more substantial than those erected by the Yankees… .” Apart from these brief descriptions by early writers, however, little was known about these structures until 1990, when archaeologist Professor Thomas N. Layton found a bill of lading for a complete prefabricated house in the ship Frolic, wrecked on the Mendocino Coast in the winter of 1850 on her return voyage from China. Further investigation led to Double Spring Ranch, Calaveras County and the discovery of two Chinese houses in tandem formerly used as the Calaveras County courthouse and later as the County post office. Part of this building has been restored and is now displayed at the Calaveras County Museum.

  The remains of the first Calaveras County Courthouse in Double Springs, originally created by placing two Chinese prefab houses in tandem.

  As city service improvements expanded beyond Portsmouth Square, brick and stone buildings were built on California, Sansome, Battery, and Montgomery Streets. The lower stories of these buildings were often constructed of imported Chinese granite. As early as 1852, a prefabricated stone building was erected at the northwest corner of Montgomery and California Streets. A crew of Chinese masons under contract with the owner, John Parrot, erected the building. Each stone was marked to instruct the workers how to assemble the structure.

  Even as the Chinese moved about the City among the polyglot population, there was a sense they were strangers in a strange land. As if they had premonition of the difficult times to come, on the evening of November 19, 1849, four leading merchants of the community, Ahi, Jon-Ling, Atung, and Attoon, led some three hundred Chinese residents to the Canton Restaurant on Jackson Street to retain the services of Selim E. Woodsworth, Esq. to act as arbitrator and counselor “in the event of unforeseen difficulties wherein we should be at a loss as to what cause of action it might be necessary for us to pursue.” Hon. J. W. Geary—who governed the city as its last “alcade” under the old Spanish municipal system and its first mayor following California’s admission to statehood—and other public dignitaries attended the affair and commended the action.

  The “China Boys,” as the local Chinese residents referred to themselves, were a familiar scene on the Square, where they participated in civic celebrations on Admission Day, Washington’s Birthday, and Independence Day. Their fancy, colorful embroidered silk and satin clothing never failed to dazzle the spectators and prompted the California Courier to print: “We have never seen a finer looking body of men collected together in San Francisco. In fact, this portion of our population is a pattern of sobriety, order and obedience to laws … not only to other residents but to Americans themselves.” Likewise, in regards to the arrival of the Chinese, the Alta California wrote on May 13, 1851, “scarcely a ship arrives here that does not bring an increase to this worthy integer of our population … the Chinese Boys will yet vote at the same polls, study at the same schools and bow at the same altar as our own countrymen.”

  Such platitudes, however, proved wrong. Even as the press predicted that the Chinese will “yet vote at our polls,” the premonition of difficult times was to come true. On December 29, 1854, Judge John Satterlee denied a Chinese application for citizenship on the basis that he did not belong to the Caucasian race. Earlier that same year, in People v. Hall (4 Cal.399), Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray of the California Supreme Court ruled that the Act of April 16, 1850, Section 14, which forbade “Blacks and Indians” from testifying in favor of or against a white man, was applicable to the Chinese, who were legally Indians because both groups were descended from the same Asiatic ancestors. The opinion of Supreme Court Justice C.J. Murray was: “When Columbus first landed upon the shores of this continent … he imagined that he had accomplished the object of his expedition, and that the Island of San Salvador was one of those islands of the Chinese Sea lying near the extremity of India… . Acting upon the hypothesis, he gave to the Islanders the name Indian. From that time … the American Indian and the Mongolian or Asiatic, were regarded as the same type of human species.” These legal decisions would lead to open hostility and violence in the gold mining districts of California.

  As newer residential and business districts developed in San Francisco, the old section was abandoned to the Chinese. During the period of the Civil War, which prevented importation of manufactured goods from the Eastern United States and stimulated expansion of light industry in the West, Chinatown became a light industrial center. Buildings were converted to accommodate the production of cigars, clothing, and shoes. For example, the Globe on the northwest corner of Jackson and Dupont, which at one time was one of San Francisco’s finest hotels, was converted to a cigar factory on one floor, a house for prostitution on another, and a school for children on the ground floor. (City planners of today did not invent multi-use buildings!) But this expansion into business was met with alarm and resentment. The San Francisco Chronicle on July 21,1878, described the Chinese expansion as the “Mongolian octopus fastening its tentacles around the City.” Henry George, a reporter for the New York Tribune, wrote on May 1, 18
69: “the Chinese are rapidly monopolizing employment in all the lighter branches of industry … such as running sewing machines; making paper boxes and bags, binding shoes, labeling and packing machines, etc. They are acting as firemen upon steamers; running stationary engines, painting carriages, upholstering furniture; making boots, shoes and clothing, cigars, tin, and woodenware.”

  Anti-Chinese Politics

  The economic depression in the East that followed the Civil War was not felt in California until the 1870s. A steady stream of unemployed Easterners took advantage of the first transcontinental railroad—completed in 1869 with the help of over 12,000 Chinese laborers—to come to California, attracted by its depiction as a land of prosperity in advertisements created by pro-business organizations and land speculators. The California Labor and Employment Exchange and the Immigrant Aid Association used such advertisements to draw labor from the East, seeking to flood the market with laborers in order to combat the demands of unionism in California.

  In the late nineteenth century, conflict between employers and laborers dominated the political landscape, with the Chinese caught in the middle as scapegoats. The workingmen’s struggle for an eight-hour day, for mechanics’ lien laws, against convict labor, and especially against the monopoly of the railroads, degenerated into anti-Chinese hysteria. Laborers cursed the Big Four, they cursed pro-Chinese advocates, but they physically attacked the Chinese. For over three decades the battle cry was “The Chinese must go!”—a phrase coined by a demagogue, Denis Kearney, leader of the Workingmen’s Party of California. He and his partner Dr. C. C. O’Donnell incited mobs at sandlot meetings. As O’Donnell said on October 25, 1877: “We are going to march to the Pacific Mail Docks and … not … allow any more Chinese to be landed … and if they persist … the Association will blow their ships out of the water” (Call 11/6/77). Likewise, Kearny threatened: “We have men who will manufacture balloons for dropping dynamite into Chinatown.”