A Great Purification By Fire, The Chinese
As I noted last time, some residents viewed the earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco in 1906 as an opportunity. “It is well to consider,” editorialized the Los Angeles Herald just days after the city stopped shaking, “that acts of Providence–earthquake and fire–have destroyed the sore and sorry weak spots of San Francisco.” [1] In its place would be “a city that will stand in a class by itself among the great cities of the world. As the star of empire winds its way westward it will pause at the Golden Gate and there rest on San Francisco–the Twentieth Century city.”[2]
Take a look at this map of the burned areas (click on the image for a larger version):
This map is from 1908, two years after the disaster, depicting the extent of rebuilding. The red outline traces the extent of the destruction in 1906. Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2006626079/.
One of the first hopes for eliminating vice by some reformers was the permanent relocation of Chinatown from the downtown district. The Chinese were the first despised immigrant community in California’s history. (Although, of course, not the first despised community by white Californians as the Natives and Mexicans were violently dispossessed of their land as soon as Americans began moving into the west in the 1840s.) The attacks on the Chinese began long before 1906. As Erika Lee has made perfectly clear in her book At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943, the “leadership” of California resulted in the first immigration law targeting a racial group and transformed the United States from an “open door” nation to a “gatekeeping” nation.
Wilhelm Hester, Chinatown, San Francisco, California, ca. 1895. Source: link below.
Long-held plans for “a city beautification scheme” included the destruction of Chinatown, the “redevelopment of its valuable, centrally located real estate,” and the removal of its residents to Hunter’s Point on the southern extremity of the city.[3] Union Labor Party Mayor Eugene Schmitz placed his political advisor Abe Ruef in the chair of a “Permanent Location of Chinatown Committee” charged with securing a new site and within days of the disaster they began discussing the matter.[4] In a display of unity with an otherwise fierce urban rival, the Los Angeles Herald consoled Californians that besides the “splendid hotels” which lay in ruin, Chinatown was also destroyed, “its degrading sights will never again be a feature of the California metropolis.”[5]
Despised as they were, the various efforts to have the Chinese removed quickly failed. At the same time some San Francisco leaders were trying to push the Chinese away, other cities such as Seattle and Portland reached out to community leaders to invite them to move north and bring their valuable Asian trading ties. Former residents also sought help from legal advisers and the Chinese Minister from Washington who told them the “owners or lessees of land in Chinatown cannot be deprived of the right to rebuild if they so desire.”[6]
Besides possessing a legal right and an eagerness to move back, the non-Chinese landlords, who owned three-quarters of the property and collected above-market rents, wanted to see the neighborhood rebuilt to continue profiting from their properties.[7]Six months after the disaster, the Merchants’ Association of San Francisco and the Chinese Merchants’ Association reached an agreement to rebuild the neighborhood, complete with “the Oriental type of architecture” on the former site that would make the new Chinatown a “great and picturesque feature of the new San Francisco.”[8]Contrary to claims that it was a stain on the city’s reputation, Chinatown had become “one of the chief attractions for tourists,” and accounted annually for $30,000,000 worth of business–and municipal taxes. When business and political representatives of Chinatown threatened to relocate across the bay or to the north and divert “San Francisco’s Oriental trade,” Mayor Schmitz relented.[9]
The Chinese were not the only population the reforming class hoped to snuff out after the fire. They also looked to prevent the city’s vice districts from regaining a foothold and leave the city’s reputation as the “Paris of the West” in its pioneering past.
[1]“A Greater San Francisco,” Los Angeles Herald (22 April 1906).
[2]“New San Francisco to be a Modern City,” Sacramento Union (2 May 1906).
[3]Marie Bolton, “Recovery for Whom?: Social Conflict After the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906-1915” (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 1997), 57; “Chinatown Never Again to Occupy Former Location,” Los Angeles Herald (24 April 1906); “New San Francisco to be a Modern City,” Sacramento Union (2 May 1906); “Great Buildings Are To Rise from Ashes,” Chronicle (25 April 1906); “Plan for New Chinatown,” Chronicle(25 April 1906).
[4]“To Seek Site for Chinatown,” Chronicle(3 May 1906); “Telegraph Hill Against Chinese,” Chronicle(28 May 1906); “New San Francisco to be a Modern City,” Sacramento Union (2 May 1906); “Fairmont to be Rebuilt,” Santa Cruz Sentinel (14 May 1906).
[5]“A Greater San Francisco,” Los Angeles Herald (22 April 1906).
[6]“Do Not Take Kindly to Suggestion to Move Chinatown,”Los Angeles Herald (2 May 1906); “Chinese Seek Permanency,” Los Angeles Herald (3 May 1906); “Looking for A Chinatown Site,” Chronicle (23 May 1906).
[7]“The Chinatown Question,” Chronicle (14 May 1906); “To Resist Moving of Chinatown,” Call (17 May 1906).
[8]“A Brand-New Chinatown,” Healdsburg Tribune (25 October 1906); “Oriental City is Planned,” Call (24 May 1906); “Typical Oriental Building for the New Chinatown,” Chronicle (2 December 1906); “Merchants Try to Make Chinatown Attractive,” Chronicle (16 October 1906).
[9]Bolton, “Recovery for Whom?” 57-8; “Want Chinatown Where It Was,” Chronicle (17 May 1906); “Chinatown to Keep Old Site,” Chronicle (30 September 1906); “Chinese Consider Move to Oakland,” Chronicle (16 May 1906); “Now Fear That the Chinese May Abandon City,” Chronicle (2 May 1906); “To Resist Moving of Chinatown,” Call (17 May 1906).