Atop the Chinatown Metro Station
There is a small parklet above the Chinatown Metro station. It has lovely views out into the area, as well as serving as a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood.
The Chinatown station was designed by Kwan Henmi, now DLR Group, including the rooftop patio,
Benches in the plaza
Looking up through the circular structure in the middle of the plaza
Chinatown Metro station These two metal screen sculptures are massive translations of Yumei Hou’s paper-cutting practice, executed in stainless steel using a laser and painted a vibrant red. “Yangge: Dance of the Bride” and “Yangge: Dance of the New Year” both take their names from the Yangge (Rice Sprout Song) folk dance from the northern provinces of China. “Dance of the Bride” depicts a Manchu wedding celebration with the figures of a bride in a sedan chair, musicians, stilt walkers and fan dancers prominent. “Dance of the New Year” includes characters from the 16th-century Chinese novel “Journey to the Continue Reading
Chinatown Metro Station This arched ceramic tile mural (14 feet high by 35 feet wide) is one of my favorites of the new BART station art installations. Embedded in this colorful array of tiles are small tiles meant to evoke the cultural exchange of the ancient Silk Road trade route where different fabrics, patterns, and ideas intersected. Individual tile patterns were sourced from art and design institutions, fashion designers, and local fabric stores. Rojas lives in San Francisco and is considered a key artist of the Bay Area’s Mission School movement. This is her third public commission in San Francisco, following Continue Reading
Wentworth Alley Chinatown This new mosaic, found on Wentworth Alley off of Washington is titled Dragon Boats Chasing Moonlight and was created by the youth program attached to the Chinatown Community Development Center. The piece was installed in September of 2018 to commemorate the Autumn Moon Festival. The inspiration for the piece stems from an ancient Chinese legend, where teams traditionally competed against each other racing dragon-shaped boats. Designed by the students with the help Rita Soyfertis, the mural, which contains more than 30,000 tiles, is said to “represent the connection of hard work and dreaming big,” * *
Chinatown Public Library 1135 Powell Street Take Root is a set of bi-lingual panels referencing traditional Chinese salutary plaques in contemporary materials of rear-illuminated, die-cut anodized aluminum. The Chinese text is based on calligraphy written for Take Root by well-known artist and calligrapher C. C. Wang. It features a Chinese-American saying about setting roots in America, that is adapted from a traditional saying about returning to the old country at life’s end. The English text is a poetic translation. Light sconces bear the names of key departing and arrival cites in Asia and America. Copper-leafed columns bear copper panels that Continue Reading
St. Mary’s Square Chinatown From the moment of installation of this statue by Carmel artist Steven Whyte it has been controversial. The plaque that accompanies the statue reads: This monument bears witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of women and girls, euphemistically called “Comfort Women”, who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces in thirteen Asia-Pacific countries from 1931 to 1945. Most of these women died during their wartime captivity. This dark history was hidden for decades until the 1990s when the survivors courageously broke their silence. They helped move the world to declare that sexual Continue Reading
1135 Powell Street Chinatown The Chinatown Branch of the San Francisco Public Library started its life as the North Beach Branch. It was changed in 1958. Andrew Carnegie left the City of San Francisco, then under Mayor James Phelan, $750,000 for a main library and branches. One half was for the main library and the rest to be distributed amongst seven branch libraries. The city paid the difference of $1,152,000. Most of these seven branches have been enlarged very slightly, all have been retrofitted to modern earthquake standards and all are included in San Francisco’s “List of Architecturally Significant Buildings.” All of the Continue Reading
Portsmouth Square Chinatown This marks the site of the first public school in California. Erected in 1847 Opened April 3, 1848 This commemorative marker was erected in 1957 by the grand lodge of free and accepted masons of the state of California California Historical Landmark 587. The following contemporary account of the little schoolhouse in Portsmouth Plaza was written by Charles P. Kimball in 1853 for the San Francisco Directory: In April 1847, the number of inhabitants exclusive of Indians, was 375. Eight months afterwards, when a census was taken by the Board of School Trustees, the number exceeded 800. Continue Reading
Grant Avenue and Jack Kerouac Alley Chinatown/North Beach This community mural is on the corner of Jack Kerouac Alley and Grant Street. Titled The Bridge, the lead painter was Robert Minervini along with over a dozen local youth from Chinatown. It was sponsored by the Chinatown Community Development Center and the Adopt-An-Alleyway Youth Empowerment Project with funds from the City of San Francisco Community Challenge Grant. Robert Minervini is a painter who creates invented spaces based on, but slightly askew from reality. He draws from notions of utopia and the sublime. His works utilize traditional motifs of still life and Continue Reading
600 California Street Chinatown These two bronze plaques were originally the doors to a hand operated elevator. The doors, designed by Lee O. Lawrie in 1930-1931 were in the Education Building of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Capitol Park in Harrisburg. The sculpture was one of six sets of elevator doors that the artist originally fabricated. This set of door panels remained there until 1972, when the building’s hand-operated elevators were replaced with automatic ones. From about 1980 to 1989, the doors were in a private collection in Virginia. They were installed at the new Federal Home Bank in 1990. Lee Oskar Lawrie Continue Reading
Ritz Carlton 600 Stockton Street Chinatown Heralded as a “Temple of Commerce” when it opened in September 1909, the massive, 17-columned building spanning Stockton Street between California and Pine Streets, has been expanded five times and is now one of San Francisco’s best examples of neo-classical architecture. The original structure, an 80′ x 80′ white cube with four giant engaged Ionic columns and rich filigree, revived the neo-classical architectural style popular with early 20th-Century financial institutions. It was designed by Napoleon Le Brun and Sons of New York to be Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Pacific Coast headquarters. Metropolitan Life commissioned Continue Reading
566 Bush Street Union Square/Chinatown There are a handful of buildings in San Francisco that turn 100 this year. This will be the beginning of my covering those buildings over the next few weeks. Notre Dame des Victoires is one of the names for the Virgin Mary. This statue of Jesus’ mother is in front of the French church, Notre Dame des Victoires. The French priest, Père Langlois journeyed to Oregon in 1842 with French Canadian trappers under the auspices of the Hudson Bay Company. He arrived in San Francisco in 1848. On July 19 of that year, he celebrated Continue Reading
580 Bush Street Financial District/Union Square/Chinatown This little hidden gem, done in 1992, is a collaboation of Ruth Asawa, her son Paul Lanier and artist Nancy Thompson. Ruth Asawa has been on this website many times before. I recently found this article by Milton Chen and Ruth Cox at Edutopia that gives a few new details about Asawa that I did not know. “The daughter of truck farmers, Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, in southern California, one of seven children. In 1942, her family was ordered to report to the temporary incarceration center for Japanese Americans at the Santa Continue Reading
600 Block of Commercial Street at Kearny Empire Park Chinatown Empire Park (once called Grabhorn Park) is a POPOS (privately-owned public open space). It is provided and maintained by, The Empire Group, owners of 505 Montgomery Street. The spire perched atop 505 Montgomery is said to be a replica of the Empire State Building, but that is most likely because a giant inflatable gorilla was hung from the spire to announce the opening of the building. This tiny little park is an oasis on a beautiful, carless portion of Commercial Street. The delightful water feature is by Pepo Pichler and Continue Reading
950 Washington Street Chinatown This mural sits on the wall of the Commodore Stockton School. The School has a very rich history. Formed in 1859 it was originally called the Chinese School. It was created for chinese only students as they were not allowed in the public schools. In 1885 the school was renamed the Oriental School to allow Koreans and Japanese to attend. In 1924 the school was renamed Commodore Stockton. Alice Fong Yu was its first Chinese teacher and children were banned from speaking Chinese. The mural depicts the Chinese of San Francisco. It was painted in 1987 Continue Reading
333 Grant Avenue Chinatown Union Square Ernest Albert Coxhead of Coxhead and Coxhead has given the city of San Francisco many of its finest buildings — one sits at 333 Grant Avenue, San Francisco landmark #141. The Home Telephone Company was San Francisco’s first telephone exchange site. The building, built in 1908 in the Mannerist style, towers regally over its neighbors. Detail of the entrance to the Home Telephone Building. The Home Telephone Company was designed for one purpose, thus the undivided treatment of the façade lends a unity to the building rarely seen in one so large. The Corinthian Continue Reading
711 Pacific Chinatown Ping Yuen Housing Originally 8 terracotta Foo dogs graced this gateway. Chinese guardian lions, known as Shishi or Imperial guardian lion, and often called “Foo Dogs” in the West, are a common representation of the lion in pre-modern China. They have traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, Imperial tombs, government offices, temples, and the homes of government officials and the wealthy, from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), and were believed to have powerful mythic protective benefits. The artist Mary Erckenbrack researched traditional Chinese animals before designing the dogs. Mary Erkenbrack was born in Seattle, Washington on Nov. 30, 1910, Erckenbrack was raised in Rio De Continue Reading
1199 Mason at Washington Chinatown This is the entry to the Betty Ong Recreation Center in Chinatown. Betty Ann Ong was a flight attendant on American Airlines, Flight 11, the first airplane to become hijacked on September 11, 2001. Shortly after the hijacking began, Betty chose to be involved and make a difference by taking action to notify the American Airlines ground crew of the hijacking situation on board the airplane. Amid horrific danger, she stayed on the telephone for 25 minutes, relaying vital information that eventually led to the closing of airspace by the FAA for the first time in Continue Reading
1199 Mason at Washington Chinatown Betty Ong Chinese Recreation Center * Colette Crutcher’s mosaic mural, titled Playthings of the Wind, located in the playground of the new center, honors China’s 2000-year tradition of kite making. The mural depicts a young child, in traditional dress, holding a string attached to a butterfly kite, which is joined among the swirling clouds and sun by two other kites in the form of a “flying lizard” and bat. The mural continues onto an adjacent wall with a depiction of a dragon kite. Using a combination of stained glass, mirror, broken fragments of Chinese cookery Continue Reading
Willie Woo Woo Playground Chinatown Sacramento Street and Waverly Place Willie Wong (b:1926,d:2005) was a Chinese-American basketball player who was born and raised in Chinatown, San Francisco. Though Wong was only 5’5″ tall, he excelled, and was known as one of the finest Chinese-American basketball players in the 1940s. He was nicknamed Willie “Woo Woo” Wong by a local sportswriter because fans would shout “Woo Woo” when he scored. He starred at Poly and Lowell high schools in San Francisco before being recruited to the University of San Francisco (USF). After playing for USF, Wong continued to compete at various local and national tournaments as part of the San Francisco Saints team. Wong died on Continue Reading
Portsmouth Square Chinatown During China’s 1989 Tianamen Square protests, when hope for sought-after reforms seemed to be fading, artist activists unveiled a 33-ft. tall paper mache and foam sculpture of the “Goddess of Democracy.” The statue, in the tradition of other giant torch-brandishing women, became an icon for the Democratic Movement, though it was demolished by government troops only five days after its appearance. Not surprisingly, replicas and tributes to the figure cropped up in other countries. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, a 10-ft. tall bronze version on a granite base was dedicated in 1994. The work was created by Continue Reading
Washington and Kearny Chinatown Diligence is the path Up the mountain of knowledge Hard work is the boat Across the endless sea of learning This is the Washington street side of the new Chinatown campus of San Francisco City College. This particular window is the library. The archival photograph is by San Franciscan Arnold Genthe. This young immigrant girl in traditional Chinese dress gazing out at the city is the cover photograph for the book Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown. She is framed by a couplet, in English and in Chinese calligraphy, metaphorically extolling the cultural virtues diligence Continue Reading
Chinatown End of Quincy Street Josh Zubkoff’s Invisible Bike This was taken right after the piece was finished in 2008 This is the image the mural originated from. It is from Ben Hu’s blog I can Cheezburger Josh graduated in 2003 from UC Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in Studio Art. He is presently a system administrator with AdInfuse in San Francisco. His website shows the vast array of mediums he enjoys working in. Josh documented a goodly portion of what was going on from beginning to end on his blog. You have to scroll through quite a bit, but it Continue Reading
* * * Arguably one of the most photographed sites in San Francisco is the Gateway Arch (Dragon Gate) on Grant Avenue at Bush Street marking the entry to Chinatown, dedicated on October 18th 1970. This gate is the only authentic Chinatown Gate in North America. Unlike similar structures which usually stand on wooden pillars, this iconic symbol conforms to Chinese gateway standards using stone from base to top and green-tiled roofs in addition to wood as basic building materials. The gate is based on the ceremonial gates that can be found in Chinese villages, called paifang. The gate is Continue Reading
Chinatown Grant and Sacramento This mural is by Twick of ICP Crew who had a mural in SOMA that has since been painted over and another one around a Banksy in Chinatown. According to his Facebook page: “Twick” is a SF Hip Hop urban legend with many ranks like a general. He is one of the most respected figures shaping the Bay Area graffiti movement from the 80’s to present day. At the age of twelve Francisco (his real name) was inspired by the Chicano writing that decorated the walls of the Mission and his neighborhood. During this time he was introduced Continue Reading
Chinatown Broadway Tunnel This is the Chinatown side of the Broadway Tunnel. It is dedicated to Robert C. Levy and has a plaque that reads: Robert C. Levy 1921-1985 City and Engineer and superintendent of Building Inspection City and County of San Francisco He devoted his life to high standards of professionalism in engineering and to this city which he loved January 1986 Dragon Relief by Patti Bowler – Bronze – 1969 The windows you see are the offices of San Francisco District Health Center #4 of Chinatown. Patti Bowler lived most of her life with her husband Carson in Continue Reading
Chinatown Portsmouth Square San Francisco remembers Robert Louis Stevenson with the first monument to Stevenson in the United States. It sits in Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. In 1876 Stevenson was at an art colony in France and fell in love Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was not only married with several children, but was 11 years his senior. In 1878, Fanny was called home by her husband in San Francisco. After a while Fanny telegraphed asking Stevenson to join her and he headed to San Francisco. At the time Stevenson was not the world renown author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Continue Reading
Chinatown 740 Washington Street 100 Children by Leland Wong This mural is part of the Art in Storefronts project sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission. Leland Wongs Bai Zi Tu, or 100 children is a traditional Chinese painting, that brings blessing of a complete and healthy family that goes on for generations. Leland, a native of Chinatown, began with what he called “Chinatown” orange, and then photographed 100 children from two schools in the Chinatown neighborhood. * The arts commission gives each artist $500, Leland knew this was going to cost considerably more, so he left his comfort zone Continue Reading
Chinatown Portsmouth Square Tot Park Untitled by Mary Fuller McChesney and Robert McChesney In researching the artists I found this 2002 article in the San Francisco Chronicle by M. V. Wood. I loved it so much I thought I would just reproduce it here for all to enjoy. They were hip. They were young and beautiful. And they were both artists living in San Francisco in the 1940s, when the city was already romantic, and the cars and tourists were still scarce. Their crowd ruled the scene long before the Beats bought their bongos. They were the countercultural kings when Jerry Garcia Continue Reading
Chinatown Powell Street Between John and Jackson Streets This is the most wonderful little city park. It is only a half block, but it is such an amazing little retreat. There are benches, green grass and a very small area for children to play. It even has two pieces of public art done in 2000. It is called Woh Hei Yuen Park. The one above is called Tectonic Melange. A 26-foot circular paving medallion composed of black, yellow and red granite depicts calligraphic Chinese characters based on a poem written by Wang Bo during the Tang Dynasty (650 to 676 B.C.E.) Continue Reading