On the east side of Kearny between Jackson and Washington stood the International Hotel (I-Hotel). When the building was condemned, college students, tenants, and Asian American community activists battled eviction of the tenants and demolition of the building. Tenants included nonprofit agencies, such as the Legal Defense Center, an organization founded to counsel young Hong Kong immigrants; Leway (legitimate way), organized in 1967 by former Chinatown street gang members; and the Asian Community Center, which operated Everybody’s Bookstore, selling material from the People’s Republic of China.
I-Hotel.
Adding to the area’s pre-Civil-Rights-era multicultural mix, Enrico Banducci moved his club, the hungry i, into the basement in the mid-1950s. The nightclub featured such headliners as the Smothers Brothers, Lenny Bruce, the Kingston Trio, and Bill Cosby, all of whom would become famous entertainers. Following the club’s closure in 1968, Banducci sold the name to a topless bar that still stands on Broadway in North Beach.
Although the united efforts of activists were unable to prevent demolition of the building, a new building that holds the Filipino History Center on the ground floor and housing units on the upper floors today stands on the corner of Jackson and Kearny Streets as a monument to the I-Hotel’s eight-year struggle against real estate development. Sadly, not all of the seniors evicted from the I-Hotel lived long enough to share in the victory and enjoy the benefits of decent housing. Ironically, only ten blocks south at Union Square, at Stockton and Sutter Streets, another monument celebrates Admiral Dewey’s 1898 victory in Manila Bay.
Walter U. Lum Place
(formerly Brenham Place)
Brenham Place was named in honor of San Francisco’s second and fourth mayor, Charles James Brenham, who had been a riverboat captain on the Mississippi before coming to California. In California, he commanded the McKim on the Sacramento River. But on January 14, 1985, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved renaming Brenham Place to Walter U. Lum Place, the first local street named in honor of a Chinese American. Walter Uriah Lum (1882-1961) was a native Californian, a leader in the Chinese American Citizen Alliance, and the founder of their newspaper, the Chinese Times. He campaigned relentlessly against the discriminatory Chinese exclusion laws. No. 17 Walter U. Lum Place, which housed the Wing Sang Mortuary, the Everybody’s Bookstore, the Asian Community Center, and the present headquarters of Chinese for Affirmative Action, has a long history of radical activities.
Walter U. Lum.
Wing Sang Mortuary
17 Walter U. Lum Place
According to Walter U. Lum, upon Sun Yat-sen’s arrival to San Francisco in 1904, his luggage was to be forwarded to the Chinese American Citizen Alliance, but was mistakenly delivered to the third floor of the Chinese Consulate, where it was confiscated. Sun found refuge at the Wing Sang Mortuary. The mortuary, a place for the dead, was alive with the clandestine meetings of a group of young Chinese Americans known as the Young China Association, founded in 1909 by Lee Kung Hop with Wong Bok Yu, Jun Oi-won, Wong Wan So, and George Fong. Using the Wing Sang Mortuary—managed by Bok Yu’s brother Bak Dun (Frank)—as their headquarters, they met with Sun Yat-sen on his third visit to San Francisco and plotted strategies to enlist more members to support the cause of the Revolution. The group founded the weekly newspaper Young China (881-882 Clay Street), with Wong Bok Yu as editor, to propagandize their cause.
Everybody’s Bookstore
17 Walter U. Lum Place
No. 17 Walter U. Lum Place was also the home of Everybody’s Bookstore and the Asian Community Center. The bookstore was largely founded by members of U.C. Berkeley’s Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), which had been involved with the I-Hotel struggle against tenant eviction.
Wing Sang Mortuary and Everybody’s Bookstore.
The Bookstore was an information center for Asian Americans, focused on promoting knowledge of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The store purchased material from Gertrude and Henry Noyes, owners of China Books & Periodicals, Inc., which held the only license issued by the United States Treasury Department to import literature from PRC. Among the Bookstore’s initial inventory were one hundred copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, which sold out immediately. AAPA disbanded and the core of its membership reorganized as the Asian Community Center, continuing to promote the lofty Communist ideology, “serve the people.” In 1980, the building was donated to another up and coming grassroots organization, Chinese for Affirmative Action.
Chinese for Affirmative Action
17 Walter U. Lum Place
In 1969, in keeping with the prevailing mood of the Civil Rights movement, the organization Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) was founded to pursue equality for the marginalized minority, using the political process for justice and social change. Milestones in its forty-year history include landmark decisions for bilingual education in the United States Supreme Court case of Lau v. Nichols, and the first hiring of Chinese Americans by the San Francisco Police and Fire Departments, which eventually paved the way for the City’s first Chinese American police chief, Fred Lau, and the first woman police chief, Heather Fong. A most important breakthrough by CAA was ending the century-old practice by construction unions of barring Chinese from the construction industry.
Chinese for Affirmative Action.
Chinese Congregational Church
21 Walter U. Lum Place
This five-story building, a version of Gothic revival, was built in 1909 after the ’06 Earthquake.
The Reverend William C. Pond, the founder of the mission, grew up in Bangor, Maine, a city steeped in religion. His father was a minister and president of the Bangor Theological Seminary. His mother was the sister of the pastor of the Hammond Street Church in Bangor. The Reverend W.C. Pond, who at six years old had sobbed and cried because he didn’t want to become a minister (Pond 1921, 10), ended up devoting a lifetime of ministry to the Chinese in San Francisco. Arriving in San Francisco February 23, 1853, in answer to the urgent call for ministers in California by the American Home Missionary Society, Reverend Pond was charged with raising funds for a new church that came to be known as The Greenwich Street Church. But the parishioners, scammed by ruthless businessmen and dishonest bankers, lost their savings and left the city to seek employment. Reverend Pond spent the next ten years in the Gold Rush town of Downieville in the Sierras. He was then sent to Petaluma for three years and in 1868 he was reassigned to the Third Congregational Church in San Francisco. The surrounding Chinese shoe factories and woolen mills provided the opportunity to conduct a Sunday school for the numerous Chinese employees. An evening school afforded additional opportunity to spread the gospel. In 1868, eight converts declared they were ready to be baptized and become members of the church, but the church Standing Committee rejected the idea. After much argument, a disappointed Reverend W.C. Pond resigned.
Chinese Congregational Church.
Following his resignation, thirty followers left the church, rented a small room for a chapel, and named it the Bethany Sunday School. Thus, on February 28, 1873, Reverend W.C. Pond opened what would become the Chinese Congregational Church of today. Jee Gam, who had worked with Reverend Pond, suggested a grandiose plan for headquarters, English classes for Chinese, and a Theological Seminary (Pond 1921, 139). In 1897, the property next to the old firehouse on Brenham Place was purchased and planning began. Architect G.A. Bordwell was hired to draw the plans for the substantial renovation, complete with a chapel, a classroom, family housing, and headquarters for the Congregational Association.
A court interpreter for the City of Oakland, Jee Gam would serve from 1904 to 1910 as the first Chinese minister of the church. He had come to San Francisco with his uncle and worked as a houseboy for The Reverend George Moser. In 1870, Jee Gam joined the Oakland Congregational Church and worked continuously among the Chinese. He became a member of the Bethany Congregational Church, where his wife was baptized in 1884. On September 19, 1895, Jee Gam was ordained
at the request of the Congregational Association of Chinese Christians for his twenty-five years of faithful service (Smith 229, note 4).
Jee Gam was invited by the American Missionary Association to attend its annual meeting in 1879. There he pleaded for the importance of establishing a mission to spread gospel in his homeland. He continued his discussions with The Reverend Pond and his vision was fulfilled when Charles R. Hager was ordained as a missionary to China at the Bethany Congregational Church on February 16, 1883. Hong Kong was the chosen seat of his mission (Smith 2005, 93). Reverend Charles R. Hager immediately started a small group in Hong Kong, among whom was a youth named Sun Yat-sen, the future father of the Republic of China! Fortuitously, this was the beginning of Sun Yat-sen’s knowledge of the overseas communities in California, where he later launched his attempt to overthrow the Manchu government.
Reverend Jee Gam planned to spend his old age in China but died while on his way. Reverend W.C. Pond, however, was still active at age 91, not only at the mission, but also in his private life. Church member Mrs. Florence C. Kwan had this story to tell (Kwan 1973, 7). The Reverend Pond came to church with his six-inch-long full beard shaved clean. The rumor among the congregation was that he was courting a middle-aged woman and was about to be married. Months later he appeared with his beard fully grown back. Church members now learned that the family of the women had opposed the marriage.
SACRAMENTO STREET
Sacramento Street where the Chinese first settled.
Sacramento Street has been occupied by the Chinese since the days of the Gold Rush. The early arrivals were Cantonese, named after the City of Canton in Guangdong Province. They called themselves “Tong Yun” (descendants from the Tang Dynasty, 618-907) from “Tong Sahn“ (land of Tong). From that time on, the street has been referred to by local Cantonese residents as “Tong Yun Gai” (“Street of the Chinese”).
Chy Lung Bazaar
674 Sacramento Street
Not all Chinese rushed to the gold fields, nor were they all domestic servants and laundrymen. A few went into mining but most set up as dealers in Chinaware, silk, shawls, and articles of curiosity never before seen by the Gold Rush population. These merchants, who were among the first to emigrate, came mostly from the Sam Yup district of Guangdong.
One of the most notable of these merchants was Chun Lock (1815-1868), who came to California and established Chy Lung on 640 Washington Street in 1850. The Daily Alta California described his commercial sagacity and enterprise as being as great as any American or European merchant (DAC 9/1/69). He imported Chinese prefabricated houses and cargoes of Chinese goods, teas, silk, lacquer and porcelain wares, and even opium. The drug that made American merchants millionaires in the China trade now found its way to California for both the Chinese and American markets. Chy Lung was one of only two Chinese businesses at the time that advertised in an American newspaper, the Daily Alta California. Chun Lock carried on the business at 676 Sacramento Street until his death in 1868. He was buried in Lone Mountain cemetery, the present site of the University of San Francisco.
His partners continued the business and, after the ’06 Earthquake, rebuilt Chy Lung as a four-story building. Contrary to Look Tin Eli’s promotion of an “Oriental Chinatown,” the building was completely devoid of Oriental motifs. Inside, however, the four stories housed a huge stock of porcelain, silk embroidered gowns, bed quilts, jade carvings, and intricately carved rosewood furniture. From its beginnings in the days of the ’49ers, Chy Lung was a major art emporium, introducing the public to the fine arts of China.
Chy Lung Bazaar.
Chung Sai Yat Po
718 Sacramento Street
This two-story brick-façade building fronting on Sacramento Street from Commercial Street was the home of the Chung Sai Yat Po, a Chinese-language newspaper. The present owner chiseled off the Chinese characters, Chung Sai Yat Po, engraved above the band at the centerline of the building. On the Sacramento façade above the upper floor windows, you can see a horizontal band with an “Oriental” motif. The head of the windows are accented with heavily glazed terra cotta trim. The Oriental design was kept to a minimum. Continuous remodeling of the storefronts has destroyed the integrity of the building.
The Chung Sai Yat Po was published by Dr. Ng Poon Chew (1866–1931), the first Chinese to graduate from the San Francisco Theological Seminary (1892). The newspaper supported the revolutionary cause of Dr. Sun Yat-sen to overthrow the Ching government. Dr. Chew was a well-known Civil Rights activist for the Chinese community, publishing the essay “The Treatment of the Exempt Classes of Chinese in the United States” in 1908, calling attention to the Chinese Exclusion Law as a violation of the treaty between the United States and China.
As a youth, Chew had heard wild stories of California as a land of impenetrable wilderness and the home of cannibals. In one such story, he heard that a group of Chinese was caught but because they were too lean to be good eating, they were held captive in a cave to be fattened up for eating—one by one (San Francisco Examiner 9/5/1925, p. 10). Nevertheless, when his uncle returned from Gum Saan (Gold Mountain) in 1879 and emptied before him eight sacks, each filled with one hundred Mexican dollars, Chew’s imagination of adventure and fabulous wealth overcame his fear of being eaten. In 1881, at the age of fifteen, he left for California.
Chung Sai Yat Po.
In San Francisco, Ng Poon Chew was derisively nicknamed “fahn kwei Chew” (“white man Chew”) by relatives and friends because he dared cut off his queue (Hunt 1950, 494). The white public, on the other hand, referred to him as the “Chinese Mark Twain” because of his oratorical skill and sense of humor. He was invited to speak at the “white only” Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Rockwell D. Hunt included Ng Poon Chew in his book, California’s Stately Hall of Fame (1950), as the “Chinese Californian Par Excellence.”
The headquarters of Chung Sai Yat Po in 1905 were at 804 Sacramento Street. After the 1906 Earthquake, the newspaper moved to Oakland, returning to the City in 1907 at 809 Sacramento Street. In 1915, the newspaper moved one block east to 716 Sacramento Street, where it remained until it suspended operations in 1951. The demise of the newspaper was due to the ever-changing political and social trends of Chinese America. Second- and third-generation Chinese Americans had begun to move outside the confines of Chinatown, and had become less dependent on Chinatown as a cultural center.
Chinese Chamber of Commerce
728-730 Sacramento Street
Chinese merchant guilds were founded early in San Francisco to minimize competition and regulate businesses. In the 19th century, the merchants from the Sam Yup district manipulated trade for the benefit of their own people. The Sze Yup merchants resented this control. The struggle for power led to an ongoing feud that continued for the remainder of the nineteenth century (see Chinese Six Companies).
In 1884, a Sze Yup man was arrested for murder and the Sam Yup refused to support his defense. In retaliation, the Sze Yup organized a boycott of Sam Yup-owned stores, which lasted for three years, resulting in a number of Sam Yup bankruptcies. Fong Ching, an infamous Sam Yup leader also known as “Little Pete,” attempted to break the boycott by terrorizing the Sze Yup. In retaliation, the Sze Yup had him gunned down while he was sitting in a barber’s chair at 819 Washington Street on January 23, 1887. Six consul generals were sent from China to mediate the dispute, without success. Finally, in 1899, the Chinese minister Wu Ting-fang took the Sze Yup relatives in China as hostages, which brought an end to the boycott. In 1906 the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco urged the union of the two guilds, resulting in the incorporation of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
Today, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce is noted for promoting the annual Chinatown New Year’s beauty pageant and inviting organizations from throughout the United States to participate in the grand parade, regardless of color or gender.
Yeong Wo Benevolent Association
746 S
acramento Street
The Yeong Wo Benevolent Association (hui kuan) was originally located on the southern slope of Telegraph Hill. The Reverend William Speer described it as “a large frame structure … evidently of Chinese architecture … with the entry guarded by a pair of lions carved in wood and the portico opening into a courtyard.” Established in 1852, it was one of the four original district associations. The Yeong Wo Benevolent Association has been at its present location since 1881.
Yeong Wo Benevolent Association.
According to the engraved date on the parapet of the commercial entrance arch, the building was built in 1928. The Kuomintang (KMT) insignia signified loyalty to Sun Yat-sen’s KMT party, which Chinese America embraced at the time the building was built.
The horizontal three-story building contained commercial space on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors, which at one time housed a Chinese school.
The five-story section used the typical pseudo-Chinese design approach for interior lots, recessing the balcony to create a loggia on the top floor with an Oriental roof overhang.
San Francisco Chinatown Page 5
