by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A recent post here detailed how ambitious and grandiose plans for a new Civic Center and a Union Station for railroads and streetcars were proposed for the historic Plaza and adjacent Chinatown for quite some time in the early 20th century. While the City Hall ended up being built further south on what had been the Temple Block, with that landmark opening in April 1928, the Union Station project was delayed just a little more than a decade, with its grand opening taking place in 1939.
From at least the beginnings of the Angel City’s first boom period, going back to the late 1860s, but especially during and after the second great boom, that of late 1880s, civic efforts to have adequate public buildings and transportation facilities, much less schools, sewers, water delivery and other essentials, struggled to keep up with the seemingly untrammeled growth of private development.
Invariably, it has always been easier to get massive public works projects built in aging areas, especially those in low socioeconomic environments, whose people do not have the financial and organizational means to fight major projects, as would be the case in more well-heeled locals. While the civic center project, which would have erased the Plaza, the historic center of pre-American Los Angeles, or remade into something completely unrecognizable, was resituated, the Union Station project met virtually no resistance, at least none that could have an effect economically or politically.
Los Angeles’ Chinatown emerged during that first boom, as Chinese migrants were imported to build local railroads while also working with laundries and other enterprises, along the Calle de los Negros, a thoroughfare to the southeast of the Plaza that was named for a dark-skinned Latino, not for a Black person, as some have assumed. Yet, the street was known as Negro or N****r Alley during the first thirty-five years of the American period.
The Chinese who lived and worked on the Calle were virtually universally despised by Anglos and Latino for a variety of reasons, including the view that they were unalterably alien in attitudes and behaviors and that they could not be assimilated or become American in they manner generally understood. Moreover, they were thought to be taking jobs from locals and many Latino were concerned about this, given that the unskilled labor they were increasingly left to have was felt to be vulnerable to the taking by the Chinese.
The suspicions and mistrust boiled beneath the surface, but exploded ferociously and fully on the night of 24 October 1871, when, after an inter-ethnic fight among the Chinese spilled out in public and led to the wounding of a Latino police officer and the killing of an American who intruded in the dispute, hundreds of Anglos and Latinos descended on the Calle, with the adobe house of State Treasurer Antonio F. Coronel being the flashpoint for the horrors that led to the lynching of eighteen Chinese men and one teenage boy.
While overt violence committed against the Chinese diminished afterwards, systematic bias and discrimination continued and the passage by Congress of an 1882 bill excluding Chinese immigration while the Anglo population skyrocketed in subsequent years brought an era in which concerns of Chinese crime definitely continued. There was, however, by the turn of the 20th century an element of exotic curiosity commingled with a growing tourism in the city that established a different perception by many about Chinese and Chinatown.
This is not at all to say there was widespread acceptance, but, rather, something of a grudging toleration, even as many persons decorated their houses with Asian knick-knacks, superficially used decorative ideas based on Chinese and Japanese themes, played mah-jongg, and in other surface-level ways. Moral crusaders, meanwhile, continued to view Chinatown as a core center for vice in drugs, gambling and prostitution and urged local officials to crack down on perceived or real activities in these areas.
In the mid-1880s, Los Angeles Street was extended north and most of the Calle, except for a small sliver at the north end, was removed. The expansion of Chinatown, however, moved north and east, including on the east end of the Plaza and, beyond that, across Alameda Street. A couple of the main east-west thoroughfares in this growing section were Marchessault Street, which included the north end of the Plaza, and Ferguson Alley, which went east from Los Angeles Street near the southeast corner of the Plaza.
The highlighted photo from the Museum’s collection for this post is a snapshot, taken on 12 August 1925, and taking in the intersection of Los Angeles Street and Ferguson Alley. At the left is a multi-story brick structure that long housed the F. Suie One Company, a mercantile establishment that was the focus of a prior post here, including with an image taken by the same person at the same time, but looking just slightly further north up Los Angeles Street.
Two smaller structures south of that take the viewer to the intersection with Ferguson Alley and thin street signs can be viewed on the power pole at the northeast corner, next to which is a parked stake-bed truck, along with a sedan. Another multi-part post from this blog highlights another image from the Homestead’s holdings that shows a portion of Ferguson Alley, along with other views of the area. To the south are more buildings and signs for Hong Hop Company, which dated back to at least the mid-1880s in the area, and the Sam Sing Company, which processed meat. The Plaza Service Station, in an island between Los Angeles Street and the old Calle area, is also notable.
With respect to the Los Angeles Chinatown and the Chinese regionally, there are some notable newspaper articles and other items from around the time this photo was taken. For example, John W. Harrington of the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News of 2 August wrote a piece in which he “attempts to explain the singular fact that Chinese restaurants and Chop Suey emporiums, despite the fad for desserts, serve but few” and the writer exclaimed,
Ice cream with tea! Glance at the menu of any large Chinese restaurant and you will count about 50 kinds of chop suey, a score [20] or so of chow meins, 10 varieties each of pork and beef, chicken in manifold guises and hosts of omelets, 15 sorts of rice, 10 variants of noodle, but only one dessert with an American appeal, and that brigaded with tea! Why have these show palaces, dedicated to Caucasian customers as they all are, not reached the summit of imagination and given us pastries for the crowning of the feast?
In addition to this declamation, what is also striking is the accompanying image, which employed the old stereotype and caricature of a Chinese man with bared teeth and eyebrows pointed at an angle, looking nothing but menacing and hardly what a restaurant patron would likely have experienced, whatever the intent may have been.
The next day’s Whittier News ran an advertisement about the wisdom of promotion of business in the press, but did so in another denigrating fashion. It asserted that, while “the civilization of the Chinese is old—older than the oldest records that are musty and yellow with age,” they had only a handful of the necessaries of modern life because “they do not welcome change” and “object to innovation.”
The strange argument was posited to demonstrate that American society was, evidently, far superior because of the remarkable claim that “advertising, more than anything else, has made of us a nation willing to judge something new on its merits, rather than on narrow, ancient traditions.” It was further insisted that “advertising today is as necessary as electricity, sanitation and rapid transit” and the ad ended with a slogan: “to buy the new is to progress—to learn of it first is to read advertising.”
John Steven McGroarty, then widely known for his paternalistic and one-sided Mission Play, held each winter at San Gabriel next to the mission and who was a future poet laureate of California, penned a rather bizarre editorial in the Los Angeles Times of the 9th with one portion titled “Two Things We Have Against the Chinese.” McGroarty began by professing “take them by and large, we have a great admiration, and even an affection for the Chinese” as “they are an honest and a kindly people,” while “they have many other admirable traits.”
Yet, the writer continued, those two items held against the Chinese was that,
they are the inventors of money and gunpowder—the two things that, to our mind, have caused more trouble in the world than anything else, unless it may be the fights about religion among Christians.
Gunpowder, of course, meant that warfare became “far more diabolical and devilish” than previously, and “when money was invented trouble was invented” with McGroarty asserting that avarice meant that “now, and ever since, all men are slaves” because “money makes them so.” He launched another broadside, however, against Christianity by adding that “the religion [Christ] founded [of course, it was his followers who established it] can’t make a turn without money.”
McGroarty’s remarkable diatribe ended with:
Darn the Chinese anyway. Why didn’t they stick to inventing mah-jongg and ping-pong and chop suey, and leave a curse like gunpowder and a nuisance like money never to be invented by anybody? [as if no other societies would have done so!]
The Times of the same day had another notable reference to local Chinese residents, this time in relation to the movie industry. It reported that director James Cruze, no doubt seeking to repeat the remarkable success of his 1923 epic, The Covered Wagon, by making The Pony Express, released in late September and starring his wife, Betty Compson, along with Ricardo Cortez and Wallace Beery (an Indian chief was portrayed, uncredited, by Hawaiian surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku).
The paper noted that “there was to be a laundry scene” and “a member of Cruze’s staff was sent out to hire fifteen Chinamen to act as extras.” Seeking authenticity for a setting in 1860 Sacramento, Cruze insisted the extras were queues (often called pigtails), but apparently was told “no actee.” It was explained that “nowadays, [the] Chinese don’t wear queues” and “no amount of explaining would persuade them to wear the necessary wigs.” Importantly, the piece continued, “they also felt that they might be laughed at, and that their Chinese brethren would see the film would condemn them.” An “educated Chinese boy” was brought in to explain, but “couldn’t budge them,” so the scene was cut from the film, which still survives.
Another instance of the open mockery of the Chinese came with the Pasadena Post and its regular “Glimerick” game, in which readers could win prizes for filling in gaps in a limerick (not unlike the modern Mad-Libs.) In this case, the theme was “Sordid Utilitarianism of Chinese Exposed” and an entrant provided words that rhymed as normal with a limerick and the first ten persons to submit correctly by 2 p.m. the following day were to receive a pair of tickets to the Crown City’s Bard Theatre.
Yet again in the Times of the 9th, there was a lengthy piece on “Strange Scenes in the Plaza,” with some history of the park space provided by B.G. Rousseau. After observing that an early attempt at improvement came in 1859 with fencing, walks and shrubs, which were not well maintained, followed by an 1870 move to change the shape from a square to a circle, Rousseau commented that,
Now the historic old Plaza is almost in the heart of Chinatown and often the dragon of China floats in the breeze. Occident and Orient meet there and rub elbows, “but never the twain shall meet,” as each maintains his own customs and beliefs. On the east end of the Plaza the head of the Chinese God Joss rises, while on the west side is a Christian church. The old world and the new are mingled. A brown, withered Oriental staggers past, bearing a burden, balanced on bamboo poles exactly as his ancestors carried them ages ago, while the burdens of the white man, including himself, are being borne swiftly on the heels of electricity and steam, harnessed to do the white man’s bidding.
Rousseau obviously considered Latinos and Anglos to be equally white in this elucidation of contrast, while there were also many Italians and other Europeans who lived and worked in the Plaza area at the time. Still, the account is another strange analysis—which leads us to the Los Angeles Express of the 4th.
Under the heading of “2 Los Angeles Landmarks Soon Will Be Buried In Oblivion,” the paper observed that, should one of the proposals mentioned in the recent post linked above come to pass, the “Union Railroad Station Will End Chinatown And Old Plaza” as “Progress To Oust Historic Spots.”
A trio of images showed a portion of Marchessault Street in Chinatown; the “headquarters of the Hop Sing Tong,” though not mentioned was that this was the prominent Lugo Adobe; and, most strikingly, a scene at the Plaza in which the caption said that the view was “showing tired Mexicans waiting for the arrival of a golden manana.” Moreover, the piece began with this observation of the area,
Dreamy Chinatown, with its odors and musty smells, its narrow streets, tong [Chinese mutual benefit societies] wars, quaint old Josh houses and chop suey palaces is soon to pass into oblivion. Likewise, the sleepy old plaza, once the pride and center of the pueblo of Los Angeles, but now dedicated as a “loafing” ground, will also soon be but a memory.
The Plaza was adjudged to be “the one spot where still remains traces of the once dominant Spanish race,” while it was erroneously stated that “Chinatown, which adjoins the plaza on the east, dates from the days of ’49,” as it was asserted that the Chinese came south to search for gold in Inyo and other counties and “made Los Angeles their headquarters.”
As noted above, it was actually two decades later that the Chinese settled in the City of the Angels in sizable numbers. The Express continued that “many of the buildings erected in the early days still stand,” though that did not generally mean from the late 1840s. Interestingly, the account added that historical organizations “hoped that the plaza and Chinatown would be left unmolested,” but, like a good booster, the paper went on to note that “the irresistible forces of progress have decreed that romance must make way for the demands of modern progress.”
Based on the recent decision of the federal Interstate Commerce Commission, which approved the concept of a union railroad station, but left it to the City of Los Angeles to decide where it would go, it was noted that it seemed likely that,
a massive building of stone will rise on the land where shade trees now grow to protect listless Mexicans [Spanish?] from the hot sun’s rays as they sit and wait in the sleepy plaza, and monstrous snorting iron-horses will rumble where slant-eyed Orientals now shuffle [not walk] along the narrow streets of dreamy Chinatown.
The Plaza was, indeed, preserved and is now the centerpiece of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, while the Chinatown east of Alameda was razed for Union Station and the section directly east of the Plaza remained for a short while longer until the construction of U.S. 101 through downtown and other work brought about more displacement. The current Chinatown, once dubbed China City, was moved to the northwest from the 1930s onward.
Photos like these help to document what was in the older Chinatown and we’ll continue to share other images from our collection as part of preserving that history of the Angel City, so look for future posts here on that subject.
Just as the Tammany Society protected Irish immigrants in New York from the 19th century through the mid-20th century, various Asian organized societies emerged to support new immigrants navigating unfamiliar environments, often seeking self-protection and quick economic opportunities. In 19th-century Chinatowns across America, Tongs played a significant role. Similarly, in Monterey Park, California during the 1960s and 1970s, when Taiwanese immigrants began arriving in California, groups like Union Bamboo and Chinese Youths were formed. In the 1980s, as Vietnamese boat people arrived, they established organizations such as Vietnamese Youths on the west coast and BTK (Born to Kill) in New York.
Throughout this post, anti-Chinese sentiment is evident in multiple instances, for various reasons as noted by the author. However, I believe racial hatred often stems from dislike, which can be triggered either by those who have engaged in low-class behaviors deemed undesirable or by those low-class individuals who, driven by unfounded reasons, find it easy to mock or denigrate others.
Any educated person should recognize that mocking someone for their inherent features or perceived defects is deeply immoral – worse than those above mentioned low-class individuals. Being short, black or brown-skinned, having slanted eyes, being mute, unattractive, stuttering, slow to learn, less articulate, or handicapped are physical or mental traits that individuals are born with or develop due to illness. These are conditions beyond their control, unlike actions such as stealing, robbing, or being lazy, which can be changed but are instead chosen.
Much of the racial hatred against the Chinese in the past was driven by this kind of prejudice, often by low-class or lower-class individuals, and is reflected today in the behavior of “Karens,” who simply cannot refrain from their hostility.
There’s an old Chinese saying: “When you like someone, their pockmarks seem like mere dimples; when you dislike someone, their dimples look like pockmarks.” This perfectly illustrates why some people just can’t resist hurling insults at the Chinese.