San Francisco Chinatown

by Philip P Choy

  Chinese Hospital

  845 Jackson Street

  Much as they did with its churches, protestant missionaries were the driving force behind establishing Chinatown’s hospital. Before the hospital existed, terminally ill Chinese were left to die in a place called the “Tai Ping Fong” (“Chambers of Tranquility”). The first attempt to establish a hospital for the indigent Chinese in 1888 was met with the usual neighborhood protest. But the refusal of the City and County hospitals to admit sick and dying Chinese patients prompted missionaries to renew their efforts to establish a hospital in the community. In 1894, The Reverend Ira M. Condit of the Chinese Presbyterian Church, The Reverend Frederick J. Masters, The Reverend W.C. Pond, and The Reverend Tong Keet Heng attempted to found a hospital, but this time, the project lacked support within the community, as district organizations were feuding among themselves.

  Chinese Hospital, built in 1925.

  It wasn’t until 1899 that the Tai Ping Fong was closed and the first hospital was opened at 920 Washington Street. The leaders of the organization were Professor John Fryer from the Oriental Department of the University of California, who had spent many years in China; Dr. B.C. Atterbury, who lived in China for twenty years as an independent missionary and established a free dispensary for indigent Chinese in Peking; and Mrs. P.D. Brown, President of the Occidental Board of Foreign Missions. A Dr. Spencer was engaged as resident physician and a Mrs. Spencer as matron.

  Chinese Hospital on 825 Sacramento Street used both Chinese and Western medicine, ca 1900.

  In the year 1900, a new two-story building was constructed at 828 Sacramento Street. The hospital used both Western and Chinese methods, employing a staff of European doctors and Chinese herb doctors, and featuring a laboratory and a surgery. Ho Hong Yuen, cousin of the Consul General Ho Yow, was director of the hospital, and its chief herbalist was Dr. Tom Wai Tong, who came directly from China. The hospital remained on Sacramento Street until, following the ’06 Earthquake, it was rebuilt on 845 Jackson Street. The present building was built in 1925, with a newer building added in 1977. Currently there are plans to redevelop the whole hospital complex.

  Chinese American Citizens Alliance

  1044 Stockton Street

  This five-story building, with a pair of Tuscan columns flanking the stairway entrance, was completed on August 10, 1921. To promote the “American” identity of its occupant, the design of this building was completely devoid of any Oriental motif.

  The Chinese American Citizen Alliance (CACA) was founded in 1895 under the name Native Sons of the Golden State (NSGS). It was forced to change its name in 1912 when the Native Sons of the Golden West (NSGW), an organization established in 1875 for white native-born Californians, filed suit against it for having a too similar name.

  Chun Dick, Sue Look, Ng Gunn, Li Tai Wing, Leong Sing, Leong Chung, and Lan F. Foy were officers of NSGS, the first Civil Rights organization founded by Chinese Americans. It was a declaration of independence from the old-world organizations that had dominated the affairs of the community. NSGS’s primary goal was to “quicken the spirit of American patriotism … and to make secure their citizen’s rights.” It was born out of necessity in an era when the society-at-large was determined to disenfranchise the Chinese.

  In 1902, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was up for renewal, Walter U. Lum and Wong Bok Yue protested on behalf of the organization against Senator Cominetti’s proposed constitutional amendment to deny children born in America of alien Chinese parents the right to vote and worked to repeal the Cable Act, which provided that a woman marrying an alien ineligible for citizenship lost her citizenship. As late as 1943, when the Nation, in a more conciliatory spirit, repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the Native Sons of the Golden West continued to lobby for Asiatic Exclusion (Chronicle 6/17/43, 5/22/45).

  Chinese American Citizens Alliance.

  In 1914, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance began to open lodges throughout the United States. In 1924, the organization founded the Chinese Times, the first Chinese newspaper published by Chinese Americans, which continued publication until 1988. CACA also fought for equal education, equal recreation facilities (such as the first playground in Chinatown in January 1927), and equal housing for the community.

  Chinese Episcopal Methodist Church

  1009 Stockton Street

  A store at 620 Jackson Street, between two Chinese theaters, was converted into a Methodist Chapel. The storefront window bore the Chinese characters Foke Yam Tong (Blessing and Benevolence) (Gibson 1877, 74). The chapel was begun by Mr. H. W. Stowe and had a seating capacity of 75. The walls were decorated with scriptures and the Ten Commandments in Chinese characters. Behind the chapel was a classroom for teaching English.

  The first preacher, The Reverend Hu Sing Mi, came from Foo Chow (Fuzhou). Next came Chow Loke Chee, followed by Chan Pak Kwai, and then Chow Loke Chee (Gibson 1877, 82). The Reverend Otis Gibson from the Methodist Mission occasionally preached there, and Chinese Christians volunteered. The Reverend Gibson came to San Francisco in 1868, after spending ten years in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, and immediately began to raise funds to build the Methodist Mission at 916 Washington Street. The building was three stories high with a mansard roof. The ground floor used folding doors to create three classrooms. The second floor likewise had folding doors to create two more classrooms, a living room, and a library. The third floor served as a sanctuary for women rescued from prostitution and as headquarters for the Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast (WMSPC). After the ’06 Earthquake, the site was given to the WMSPC to build the Gum Moon residence for women. The new mission was located down the block at the northwest corner of Washington and Stockton.

  Chinese Episcopal Methodist Church.

  In 1876, during the height of the anti-Chinese movement, The Reverend Gibson gave favorable testimony on behalf of the Chinese at a Joint Congressional hearing held in San Francisco. As a result, he fell into disfavor with the public and was hung in effigy in front of Mechanics Pavilion after Father Buchard from St. Francis Church delivered his infamous anti-Chinese speech at an anti-Chinese rally.

  Later, in the 1930s, Reverend Gibson’s granddaughter Eunice Gibson followed in his footsteps and dedicated her life to working as a public health nurse at the Chinese Health Center on 1212 Powell Street. Minnie Fong (sister of Alice Fong Yu) was the first Chinese public health nurse.

  Gordon J. Lau Elementary School

  945 Washington Street

  The Chinese Primary School was built strictly to keep Chinese from entering schools with white children. In his annual report of 1858, Andrew Moulder, California’s first State Superintendent of Schools, warned that “If this attempt to force Africans, Chinese, and Diggers into our white schools is persisted, it must result in the ruin of our schools.” Segregated schools for “Negro, Mongolian and Indian children” were prescribed in 1867 by the School Law, which was amended in 1870 to omit the Chinese.

  On May 28, 1878, on behalf of the Chinese, attorney B.S. Brooks petitioned the School Board to make provision for a school for Chinese children. This petition was ignored until 1884, when Joseph Tape, a person of Chinese descent, sued the school district and the principal, Jeannie M.A. Hurley, for not admitting his eight-year-old daughter Mamie into Spring Valley Grammar School. The Supreme Court ruled that, as an American citizen, Mamie was entitled to an education and had to be allowed to enter the school. The Board quickly leased a building on the southeast corner of Jackson and Stone to establish the Chinese Primary School, just to keep Mamie from attending Spring Valley. The Chinese Primary School moved to 916 Clay Street but was destroyed during the ’06 Earthquake. A temporary building was constructed for the Chinese Primary School at the southwest corner of Joice Alley on Clay Street.

  Commodore Stockton School was renamed Gordon Lau Elementary School in 1998.

  Following the Earthquake, however, school facilities were overcrowded and white parents complained about the increased p
resence of Japanese students. In the 1890s, the Japanese had begun to immigrate to San Francisco and their children began to enroll into public schools. In response, on October 11, 1906, Superintendent Roncovieri merely renamed the Chinese Primary School “the Oriental School.” As decided in the case Mamie Tape vs. Hurley, Japanese pupils would have to attend the Oriental School in compliance with Section 1662 of the 1885 School Law, which stated that, when separate schools exist for children of “Mongolian” descent, those students must attend the schools provided for them. Japanese government protests against the hostility toward the Japanese in California and the discrimination against Japanese pupils in segregated schools nearly created an international crisis. President Theodore Roosevelt, mindful not to offend the Japanese government, attempted to coerce California into giving Japanese pupils the right to attend white public schools, threatening to use “all the forces military and civil, of the United States which I may lawfully employ … against California” (S.F. Chronicle 12/5/1906, p. 6).

  Oriental School on the Southwest corner of Joice and Clay Street.

  The situation was resolved when Roosevelt persuaded the school authorities to rescind its anti-Japanese resolutions. In return he agreed to limit the immigration of Japanese laborers. In 1907, Roosevelt entered into the Gentlemen’s Agreement, giving the Japanese Government the right to use its own discretion to limit emigration of Japanese laborers to the United States. The School Board merely reclassified the Japanese as “Malaysian” rather than “Mongolian.”

  In 1912—the same year a fourteen-year-old white boy was killed by a Chinese person in a racial conflict, near the Oriental School—the school board proposed establishing a new school on the south side of Washington between Stockton and Powell Streets. Bitter neighborhood opposition resulted, with complaints that the location encroached beyond the western boundary of Chinatown. The proposed location of the school close to the Washington Primary School on Mason and Washington Streets further aggravated the racial tensions between white and Chinese schoolboys. But in spite of these objections, the new Oriental School was completed in 1915.

  The Chinese American Citizen Alliance, objecting to the overtones of inferiority implied by the term “Oriental,” petitioned the School Board to change the name to Harding Primary School. On April 1, 1924, the Board instead elected to rename the school Commodore Stockton School. In 1998, at the request of Civil Rights activists, the Board of Education approved changing the name from Commodore Stockton School to the Gordon J. Lau Elementary School, in honor of Supervisor Lau for his Civil Rights activities during the ’60s and ’70s protesting poor housing conditions and the lack of employment opportunities in the Chinese community.

  Equally important, the school was also the first to hire a Chinese American school teacher, Alice Fong Yu. While attending San Francisco State Teacher’s College, Alice was warned by the president of the college not to go into teaching because she would never be hired. Being realistic, Alice expressed her intent to teach in China, not in the United States. But, to her surprise, on January 18, 1927, she was officially notified of her appointment as teacher at what was then Commodore Stockton School. Her appointment was a response from its newly appointed principal, Anna T. Croughwell, who was in a near-panic at the challenge of handling a school full of jabbering Chinese with whom she could not communicate. She requested a Chinese-speaking teacher not to teach but to serve as a translator in the administrative office, as well as be a clerk, nurse, and parent-teacher liaison. Only much later did Alice actually teach in the classroom. In 1995 the nation’s first public Cantonese immersion school, located in the Sunset District of San Francisco, was named after Alice Fong Yu.

  Gum Moon Residence

  940 Washington Street

  The Gum Moon (Golden Gate) Residence was dedicated on January 27, 1912. This was architect Julia Morgan’s first attempt to design a building in the Chinese community. Contrary to the prevailing movement to create an “Oriental” City, Morgan used Chinese motifs in her design conservatively, avoiding stereotypical images. The outriggers supporting the roof have only a hint of Chinese design under the eave; a continuous polychrome terra-cotta frieze decorates the building top, with the same terra cotta applied under the entrance vault. Suspended at the entrance is a handsomely designed large copper lantern. Eighteen years later, in the design of the Chinese YWCA, Morgan would display even more confidence in interpreting Chinese art and architectural forms.

  The history of the residence dates back to 1868, when The Reverend Otis Gibson established the Methodist Mission at the site (then numbered 916 Washington). The mission did more than preach the gospel. Preceding the much-publicized work of Cameron House, the Methodist Mission also housed orphans and Chinese women rescued from prostitution. Responding to The Reverend Gibson’s request, the Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast was organized on October 20, 1870, under the supervision of Mrs. H. C. Cole. By the 1890s, Deaconess Durant and Katherine Mauer continued the work with the cooperation of Donaldina Cameron of the Chinese Presbyterian Mission Home. Katherine Mauer, known as “the angel of Angel Island,” was noted for her work among the Chinese detainees there.

  Gum Moon Residence.

  After the ’06 quake, missionary work continued. Gum Moon was rebuilt as a home for women. The Reverend Gibson had the Methodist Mission built down the block on the northwest corner of Washington and Stockton Street. Today, Gum Moon continues to serve the community by providing a home to non-English-speaking Chinese women, helping them to acclimate.

  Chinese Presbyterian Church

  925 Stockton Street

  When First Presbyterian Church elder Thomas C. Hambly organized a Bible class for the Chinese, Tong A-Chick and Lee Kan, both former students at the Morrison Mission School in Hong Kong, were among the first attendees. Offering classes in English was not sufficient to convert the Chinese, so a Chinese-speaking minister was requested. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions responded by sending The Reverend William Speer, who returned from Canton to work among the Chinese in San Francisco. Four Chinese Christians, A-t’un, A’San, A-teen, and Ho Ch’eong, welcomed him and together they organized the first Chinese mission in America on November 6, 1853, on the northeast corner of Stockton and Sacramento Streets.

  When The Reverend Speer first arrived in San Francisco in October 1852, he visited Tong A-Chick at the Young Wo District Association but was unsuccessful in enlisting him as a charter member of the new Chinese mission. However, A-Chick did assist in raising $2,000 from the Chinese community to build the mission.

  Reverend Speer published a newspaper called the Oriental; Lee Kan was editor of the Chinese section. As resentment toward the Chinese began to grow, the paper staunchly defended them. Reverend Speer retired in 1859, and was succeeded by The Reverend A.W. Loomis, a missionary returning from Ningpo, China, followed in 1870 by The Reverend Ira Condit, who had been a missionary in Canton.

  Chinese Presbyterian Church.

  As the white population began to abandon the area near Chinatown, the First Presbyterian Church on Stockton Street was sold to the Board of Foreign Missions and became the new Chinese Presbyterian Mission. The Gothic-style church was destroyed during the ’06 quake and one year later the present building was constructed with a porch supported by classically ornamented columns with ionic capitals. The building has since been remodeled, preserving the integrity of the façade.

  Hop Wo Benevolent Association

  913 Stockton Street

  The Hop Wo Benevolent Association is one of the original six associations that comprised the Chinese Six Companies. It was founded in 1862 when it separated from the original Sze Yup Co., founded in 1851. In 1881, Hop Wo was located at 673 Clay Street, with a notable temple. The present building, constructed after the 1906 Earthquake, may have had an “Oriental” style parapet that has since been removed.

  Hop Wo Benevolent Association.

  St. Mary’s Chinese Mission

  930 Stockton St
reet

  This building was the St. Mary’s Chinese Mission until in 1998, when it was sold. As of this writing, a new building is being completed at Kearny and Jackson Streets.

  In the 19th century, the Chinese and the Irish were the two largest foreign-born groups in San Francisco. The Irish were predominantly Catholic; unfortunately, racial intolerance permeated even the highest ranks of the Catholic clergy. Economic competition kept the two groups even further apart. In the 1870s, when the Irish began to demand higher wages, the Chinese were induced to go East to replace them.

  Anti-Chinese issues in the West often translated to Irish vs. Chinese, Catholic vs. Protestant. At the height of anti-Chinese activities, during the 1876 “Joint Congressional” hearings, Father Bouchard in San Francisco gave his inflammatory speech: “Chinaman or white man, which?” The Reverend Otis Gibson of the Chinese Baptist Mission responded on behalf of the Chinese and was hung in effigy during an anti-Chinese rally. The Catholic Church not only failed to transcend racism, but also fanned its flames.

  In 1883, the more conciliatory Father Alemany requested authority from Rome to start a mission for the Chinese in San Francisco. Father Antonucci—who had spent six years in China, spoke Mandarin not Cantonese, and barely spoke English—was charged with the responsibility. J.O. Donoghue and a Chinese Catholic named Andreas Ma assisted him. On March 29, 1883, the San Francisco Daily Morning Call described the new mission as a little cottage established on the “north side of Clay Street between Stockton and Mason Street with terraces and steps leading down to a paved court opening on Clay Street… . ” Immediately there was an attendance of fifty Chinese. But what happened thereafter hasn’t been recorded.