Welcome to Seattle Chinatown-International District
Seattle’s Chinatown - International District, a neighborhood nestled south of downtown, is the cultural hub of the Asian American community. It rose not far from the waterfront, on reclaimed tide flats. During a gigantic city regarding project, the Jackson Street Regrade, completed in 1910, this muddy wasteland was filled in with earth, buildings were erected and the Chinatown – International District was born.
The First Seattle Chinatown
The first Chinese man
to settle in Seattle may have been Chin Chun Hock. Arriving in 1860 he was
employed as a domestic worker. By 1868 Chin Hock had founded a general
merchandising store, The Wa Chong Co., at the foot of Mill Street. Partners in
Wa Chong were Woo Gen and Chin Gee Hee. Wa Chong advertised itself as a
manufacturer of cigars, sugar, tea, rice and opium. It was also a major importer
and distributor of fireworks together with the Hitt Firework Co. Chen Cheong may
have been the first Chinese immigrant to establish a business. He began
manufacturing and selling cigars in 1867 from his contracting business,
established 1865 on Commercial St. (First Ave.) across from Schwabacher Bros.
Wa Chong was also a labor contractor, acting as the middleman between Chinese
immigrants canneries, lumber mills and farms and for labor on city projects such
as the regr looking for work and various industries employing them: railroads,
mines,ades. Originally located in a row of commercial shops on Mill Street, the
Wa Chong Co. was by 1876 in a brick building at the corner of Third and
Washington Streets.
Wa Chong was also a
dealer in opium and was issued a special stamp by the U.S. Customs to put on
their opium manufactured in Seattle. Other Chinese merchants followed Wa Chong's
move to Second Ave. and this area became the first Chinatown. Among the most
prominent were Eng Ah Kingand his King Cheong Lung Co.; Woo Gen; Chin Bug Kee
and his On Tai Company and ChinGee Hee who founded the Quong Tuck Co.
Chin Gee Hee and the Quong Tuck Co. sold general merchandise, and acted as the
general agent for all of the trans-Pacific steamship companies. There was a
direct route to China from Seattle established in 1874. Chin was a labor
contractor for railroad labor and went back to his home district of Toisan in
southern China in 1905 and established one of the first railroads there, the
Sun-Ning Railroad.
It is perhaps the only
area in the continental United States where Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos,
African Americans, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Cambodians, settled together and
built one neighborhood. In the beginning, sojourners from Asia – mostly single
men – came by steamship and rail into the new port city, Seattle, Washington,
seeking refuge from poverty and war. They crowded into hotels, storefronts and
employment halls which emerged near the railroad station and waterfront. These
men came when the city was young to work in the canneries, railroads, and mines.
Many worked in the businesses which grew up around these enterprises –
laundries, hotels, restaurants, stores and gambling houses. They lived frugally,
finding comfort in familiar surroundings shrouded from the harsh discrimination
outside. Those that decided to stay brought wives, children and relatives to
live with them..