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Possibly The Earliest Extant Painting of L.A.'s Chinatown

Fascinating early hand-painted scene of the buildings at the intersection of Aliso Street and Calle de los Negros (later Los Angeles Street) in the original Los Angeles Chinatown.

This early oil painting depicts Calle de los Negros in Los Angeles' Old Chinatown during the early 1870s - around the time of the 1871 lynching of 18 Chinese men and boys by a violent L.A. mob near the very spot shown.  The view is looking northeast from Arcadia Street, clearly showing structures located on Calle de los Negros. The crumbling Coronel Adobe, built in 1840 and later removed to allow the extension of Los Angeles Street, is clearly visible at left on the northwest corner of Arcadia Street and Calle de Los Negros. This adobe was a notorious vice center before the arrival of the Chinese, the haunt of gamblers and prostitutes, famous for 24-hour gambling. Harris Newmark later used it for lumber and iron storage, and by 1871 the old adobe was being leased to a Chinese immigrant. The colonnaded building on the right, with red Chinese-style lanterns, was a place known to have housed Chinese laborers, offering low-priced furnished rooms. The smaller structure in the far right, notably in good repair here, housed Sam Sing's butcher shop, a purveyor of pork in the growing community. In later years this structure was used by a farrier or blacksmith named Kennedy who put up a trade sign shaped like a horseshoe.

While the painting is unsigned, it is clearly the work of an amateur artist, quite likely a traveler who arrived by the new rail connection which facilitated travel to the erstwhile isolated Pueblo de Los Angeles. The absence of telephone or telegraph poles, which were installed in the intersection in the 1880s and usually visible in datable photographs, helps date this artwork to an earlier period, mostly likely the early 1880s (for comparison see links to other 19th-century views of Chinatown below), certainly before 1886.

Indeed, this artwork is potentially the earliest extant painted view of L.A.'s original Chinatown, before it moved to the Apablasa tract, east of Alameda. In addition to the lack of telegraph poles, the Coronel Adobe, no longer has it's covered wooden sidewalk or veranda which is so prominent in photographs of the intersection dating from the early-to-mid-1870s.

An extensive search has failed to yield an earlier painted view of Los Angeles Chinatown (see links below for photographs dating from circa 1875 and paintings from circa 1886). 

While the present view is peaceful and serene, it captures a tumultuous time and place in the city's history of racial violence.

L.A.'s Original Chinatown, Calle de Los Negros & the 1871 Chinese Massacre

The original Chinatown in Los Angeles evolved from an influx of Chinese who settled in Los Angles following the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s. The area that became the first Chinatown had been a center of vice in the Pueblo from the 1850s. As more Chinese arrived it evolved into a bustling center for Chinese immigrants and culture. Regrettably, the Chinese community faced significant racial prejudice and hostility from other residents. Tragedy jolted the community on October 24, 1871, when a mob of around 500 people attacked Chinatown, resulting in the massacre of 18 Chinese residents. The violent outbreak was fueled by racial tensions after Robert Thompson, in company with an L.A. police officer, was killed on Calle de los Negros in the crossfire between two feuding Chinese societies, or "tongs." The situation was exacerbated by misinformation and existing prejudices against the Chinese community. This brutal event, one of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history, took place on Calle de los Negros, the very place depicted in the painting. This street, located on the Plaza's eastern edge, long known for its saloons and brothels, was notorious for violence going back to 1850s and 1860s. Spanish speakers referred to it as Calle de los Negros, a term that originally described people of dark skin within the Spanish-colonial casta system. However, its English translation, "N----r Alley," became a derogatory and racist term reflecting the city's dangerous and lawless nature during that era.

Civil War veteran James. M. Guinn, who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1870s, described Calle de los Negros in his 1915 book, A History of California:

Of the historic streets of Los Angeles that have disappeared before the march of improvements none perhaps was so widely known in early days as the one called Calle de Los Negros in Castilian Spanish, but Ni--er alley in vulgar United States. Whether its ill-omened name was given from the dark hue of the dwellers on it or from the blackness of the deeds done in it the records do not tell. Before the American conquest it was a respectable street, and some of the wealthy rancheros dwelt on it, but it was not then known as Ni--er alley. It gained its unsavory reputation and name in the flush days of gold mining, between 1849 and 1856. It was a short, narrow street or alley, extending from the upper end of Los Angeles Street at Arcadia to the plaza. It was at that time the only street except Main entering the plaza from the south. In length it did not exceed 500 feet, but in wickedness it was unlimited.

On either side it was lined with saloons, gambling halls, dance houses and disreputable dives. It was a cosmopolitan street. Representatives of different races and many nations frequented it. Here the ignoble red man, crazed with aguardiente, fought his battles, the swarthy Sonoran plied his stealthy dagger and the click of the revolver mingled with the clink of gold at the gaming table when some chivalric American felt that his word of "honah" has been impugned. The Calle de Los Negros in the early '50s, when the deaths from violence in Los Angeles were of almost daily occurrence, was the central point from which the wickedness of the city radiated.

It is interesting to note that a large part of Calle de Los Negros was destroyed by fire in the late 1880s. According to Roberta S. Greenwood, "A blaze consumed the better part of Negro Alley in 1887; at around the same time, a new Chinatown was born to the east of Alameda." Greenwood quotes a contemporary (1887) account of this move, published in the Los Angeles Times:

The removal of Chinatown from its present quarters on "Nigger" alley and on the east side of the Plaza to a section more remote and less obtrusive, is a good fortune which has literally been forced upon Los Angeles. Nobody thought seriously of undertaking such a beneficent work until Col. Bee, the Chinese Consul, came here and set about accomplishing it... Chinatown will be removed very shortly... Undoubtedly the late incendiary fires and the withdrawal of insurance from the Chinese quarters by the insurance companies have been most potent influences which sought to burn the Chinamen out... Now Los Angeles Street, which has so long been held in suspense, can be put through to a juncture with Alameda Street, and an unsightly and noisome quarter of town can be revolutionized. - Los Angeles Times, Aug. 10, 1887, in Greenwood, Down by the Station, pages 11-12.

As late as 1913 Baist's Atlas of Los Angeles retained the earlier "Negro Alley" label alongside the N. Los Angeles Street name.

A rare visual record of L.A. Chinatown in the 1870s and a silent witness to the racial violence and social challenges faced by Chinese immigrants in 19th-century Los Angeles.

For comparison, see this 1876 photographic view, one of the earliest known photos of LA Chinatown. Note covered wooden sidewalk along the Coronel Adobe:

http://centerforethnography.org/content/los-angeles-chinatown-1870s

And this 1886 photograph of nearly the same perspective as our painting. Note the addition of telegraph pole:

1886 looking east on Arcadia towards E side of S end of Calle de los Negros. Coronel Adobe at left - Los Angeles Street - Wikipedia

The next earliest extant paintings date from 1886 clearly shows a later moment in the area's built environment:

Frederick Schafer's large oil on canvas, 1886. Seaver Center, LA County Natural History

Painting FFSd0040: Chinatown, Los Angel… (mit.edu)

Alexander Harmer's oil on canvas, also circa 1886. Irving Museum.

SunshineTrainsHollywood_ElaineAdams.pdf (americanlegacyfinearts.com)

This video gives an overview of the massacre.