Making Over an Ethnic Center

Chinatown, in downtown Los Angeles, is waiting for its close-up. After years of neglect and the defection of second-generation immigrants to the suburbs, one of L.A.’s historic and prime retail centers is slowly wasting away.

From the 1940s through the ‘60s, the Central Plaza area, bounded by Hill Street and Broadway, was the retail, cultural and ceremonial center of the region’s Chinese community. But a dramatic rise in the immigrant population of ethnic Chinese and Asians in the past 20 years shifted that dynamic eastward--to the San Gabriel Valley and communities such as Monterey Park and Alhambra--and turned Chinatown into a community divided between established merchants and scrambling entrepreneurs. This has left the core of Los Angeles’ historic Chinatown a shell.

While the area surrounding Central Plaza continues to offer services and merchandise to the segmented Chinese Asian community, and trinkets to the few tourists who venture there, New Chinatown, christened in 1938, is a vacant landmark ready to topple, another bit of historic Los Angeles about to be unnecessarily lost.

A Chinatown of some sort has existed north of City Hall for more than 100 years. Sprawling and uncontrolled, the early Chinatown was an ethnic ghetto on the site of today’s Union Station. Plans for a new railway hub called for the destruction of the old Chinatown in the early 1930s. Two rival relocation proposals emerged. One was developed by a group of Chinese businessmen. With the help of Anglo activists, their solution was to create both a tourist center and locus for the surrounding ethnic community.

This plan competed against a now-forgotten project, China City. It was created by Christine Sterling, who spearheaded development of Olvera Street and emphasized themed entertainment. China City catered mainly to tourists in an area adjacent to Olvera Street, and its thin premise ultimately proved unsuccessful. It faded within a decade of its inception. New Chinatown, nurturing community and tourism, held sway.

New Chinatown managed to retain its central position until the current Asian influx, starting in the 1970s, shifted the ethnic center eastward and also introduced tensions to the downtown area between the newly arrived and the second generation of New Chinatown founders. These schisms have kept Chinatown from addressing the economic changes that threaten it, including high land prices and falling tourism. Today, a neon sign beneath the decorative entrance arch on Broadway announces you are in “Old Chinatown.” But the entire area suffers from benign neglect.

By allowing New Chinatown’s Central Plaza to slowly disappear, another vacuum in L.A.’s identifiable ethnic communities appears imminent. Urban sprawl has diluted most of the city’s visual icons. Those denoting an ethnic presence are rare. With the exception of Little Tokyo, distinctive ethnic centers with an identifiable architecture, a place for both ceremony and entertainment, are absent from the region, creating an even greater need for celebrating the area’s rich ethnic heritage.

What now represents the new Chinese community in Monterey Park and surrounding towns are bulky, pastel-colored, multilevel shopping centers and neo-streamlined strip malls. With no identifiable connection to Chinese heritage, no center, no place to congregate, the need to establish a new Chinese community center closer to the action in San Gabriel would be admirable--if the Central Plaza of New Chinatown wasn’t waiting to be reignited.

While the architecture of New Chinatown might invite criticism for being a stereotype of authentic Chinese architecture, the cluster of pseudo-Chinese stores and restaurants gave the 1940s community some ethnic identity where none had existed. The result was the nation’s first planned Chinatown. At the time, the architecture was described as not an exact representation of native Chinese buildings, but as “Chinese-American,” a blend of Chinese elements and modern buildings.

Working with a limited budget, the architects, Eric Webster and Adrian Wilson, designed a complex of 18 units for their client, the Los Angeles Chinatown Assn., a Chinese community organization. The architectural integrity of New Chinatown, while kitschy by today’s standards, remains a gem of fantasy architecture, an L.A. tradition.

The informal policy of the Southland, to tear down and rebuild, should not be followed here. Like other regional Los Angeles artifacts such as aging postwar suburbs, vintage strip malls and commercial and industrial tracts, the Central Plaza of New Chinatown should be inventoried and restored to re-create a successful past that once existed.

A look at the New Chinatown of the past shows what could and should be restored. Grandview Gardens, once an exclusive restaurant lauded for its architectural quality, now stands as a burned framework. It could easily be resurrected as the fashionable culinary destination it once was. The same could be done for such once-famed dining spots as the Golden Pagoda, General Lee’s, Jerry’s Joint and the Forbidden Palace. In addition, many import stores remain untouched and intact, requiring only minor cosmetic retouching on their facades.

Within this complex of vintage buildings lies an opportunity to build a new vision of Chinatown. New structures by visionary architects could house Pacific Rim trade organizations and centralize Asian commerce. Innovative solutions for community-based buildings could also be integrated into the old fabric of a restored area. A reinvigorated Central Plaza could emerge as the unifying center for the disparate Chinese community, now spread out over miles of anonymous turf.

An entertainment component would be essential to the area’s success. Taking a cue from Disney and Universal Studios, which have incorporated elements of the real Chinatown into their amusement parks, New Chinatown could offer authentic venues and events to compete with the canned versions just miles away.

The Chinatown that remains is ripe for renovation. Despite years of neglect, the vintage remnants of the themed buildings are in salvageable shape. An authentic piece of L.A. history, it stands ready to be recycled into a viable commercial enterprise. The setlike quality of the stores and restaurants, such as Sincere Importing Co. and K.G. Louie Co., seem to be just waiting for a savvy entrepreneur. The right combination of restaurants, nightclubs and retail stores could draw in the Chinese community and many other Angelenos as well. It is this balance of community and tourism, key to the area’s past, that must be incorporated into its future.

The idea of a New Chinatown was, and still is, a good one. The need for a contemporary Chinese community center is vital, and the Central Plaza of New Chinatown could serve as a commercial and ceremonial core for both longtime resident Chinese and recent immigrants. It could also draw the larger community of Los Angeles.

The infrastructure is there. The foundations of New Chinatown stand ready for reincarnation. Before the Central Plaza area of New Chinatown becomes another victim of the “lost L.A.” syndrome, the various Chinatown factions, Chinese, Asian and Anglo, must move quickly and heed the message installed in 1938 over the west entryway pailou, “Cooperate to Achieve.”*