Spotlighting a City’s Chinese Legacy
Howard “Toby” Louis remembers well the Chinese school, wash houses, temple and gambling dens that once made up Chinatown.
That was more than 80 years ago, when Louis was a boy and the city had one of the most flourishing Chinese districts on the West Coast. His family, like other Chinese families, settled on Palm Street because they weren’t welcome a block away in the small adobe shops that flanked the Mission San Luis Obispo downtown.
“We had to mind our Ps and Qs, I can tell you that,” 91-year-old Louis recalled of the Chinese community that historians say swelled to 1,500 during its heyday at the beginning of the century. “There was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment here over the years.”
Proximity to the downtown core contributed to Chinatown’s demise as the city paved over the neighborhood to create parking lots for a post-World War II retailing boom. Little but the Ah Louis Store, owned by Louis’ family, and the Mee Hing Low Chop Suey Shop survived, and the city’s Chinese legacy was largely buried.
But San Luis Obispo has launched an effort to restore its Chinatown, moving to reclaim parking lots for new stores, offices and apartments.
Preliminary plans call for moving parking underground and in its place constructing two- and three-story residential and business buildings reminiscent of Waverly Place in San Francisco’s more famous Chinatown.
“We will incorporate Chinese artifacts into the project as much as we can,” said architect Mark Rawson. “We won’t restore the old wooden structures which were in Chinatown, but we are keeping a look people will find familiar.”
The revival was the brainchild of Tom and Jim Copeland, owners of the San Luis Obispo-based Copeland’s Sports chain.
The development would span two square blocks close to the Ah Louis Store, the onetime general store with giant iron shutters where Louis now sells ivory, jade and Asian artifacts.
The Copelands also developed the city’s Downtown Center, which includes a multiplex theater, a Starbucks, a Barnes & Noble and other retailers.
San Luis Obispo is known for its thriving downtown, recently named the best in the West among small cities by Sunset magazine. Downtown enjoyed a rebirth in the late 1970s, when the city brought a still-popular farmers market to downtown Higuera Street each Thursday night in an effort to dissuade teenagers from cruising the area.
Municipal officials hope the Chinatown project will restore the city’s Chinese legacy and further enhance the area’s charm.
“Downtown is hot, and we want to keep it hot,” said Assistant City Administrator Ken Hampian. “This project is a way to do that.”
City Council members have voiced support for the plan by agreeing to negotiate exclusively with the Copelands, who hope to begin work next year, on the sale of the parking lots.
Although the buildings would have a Chinese flavor and some would have Chinese writing on signs, the stores would sell clothing, housewares and lattes as in any other regional center. Suggested retailers include Abercrombie & Fitch and Baby Gap.
“I don’t think anybody is expecting Chinese souvenir shops or even wants them,” said John Gong, president of the Chinese Professionals Assn. “But it is a good project, and we are very excited about it.”
Dan Krieger, a history professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said that the city treated the Chinese abominably in the past and that a well-done project incorporating Chinese artifacts would be better than what visitors see today. “Parking lots are generic. Chinatown is not. The project in the end may not be perfect, but it will tell everyone that the Chinese were here,” he said.
Krieger and local archeologists said the town’s Chinatown was one of the largest between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Chinese workers built the narrow-gauge railroad between San Luis Obispo and the port at Avila Beach, and they were hired again when Southern Pacific came through in 1894.
Ah Louis, Toby Louis’ father, became a labor contractor for the entire Central Coast, providing workers for wharf, railroad and road projects as the area accepted settlers who had failed to strike it rich in the Gold Rush.
Artifacts collected from a site once occupied by a parking lot include opium pipes, toothbrushes, harmonicas and ceramics.
The Ah Louis Store was founded in 1874. Louis is the last survivor of the eight children born in the family’s home upstairs. These days, he and his wife, Yvonne, open the shop sporadically, still ordering merchandise from across Asia for their clientele.
Louis likes the Copelands’ proposal, but he has seen the ups and downs of downtown businesses. The project “looks like it will be first rate,” he said. “I’m glad they are willing to tell people there is a rebirth in San Luis’ Chinatown, but I’m glad I’m not the one paying for it. People today want to drive up, step out the . . . door of the car and go into the store. That seems to be all they want.”
