San Francisco Chinatown

The Gate

Start at Grant Avenue and Bush Street, under the Dragon Gate. Look up. Three portals, green tile roof, guardian lions on the curb. The gate was dedicated in 1970, designed by architects Melvin Lee, Joseph Yee, and Clayton Lee, with funding in part from the Republic of China in Taiwan. Walk through the central arch and you enter one of the oldest Chinatowns in North America, and one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the United States west of Manhattan. The Chinatown behind the gate dates to the 1850s, but almost none of the buildings you are looking at were here before 1909. Grant Avenue used to be called Dupont Street, and in the eighteen hundreds it was the most notorious block on the West Coast — a reputation built on gambling halls, opium dens, and the press attention that followed them. The name was changed after 1906, along with almost everything else here, and that change was not an accident. Count the green tiles on the nearest roof curve before you move on.