The Architecture of San Francisco Chinatown

Present-day visitors to Chinatown see it only as an unassimilated foreign community where cultural traditions are preserved and where the architectural forms are mere transplants from China. Transfixed by cultural exotics, few see that the social history of the community is intimately interwoven with its architecture.

     -- Philip P. Choy, The Architecture of San Francisco Chinatown

The seminal study by Phil Choy, with a new selection of images, and updated with recent discoveries

About the author

Philip P. Choy was born and raised in San Francisco Chinatown. A retired architect, Choy is a renowned authority on California and Chinese American history and historical sites. He has served on the San Francisco Landmarks Board, the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society Advisory Committee, and the California State Historical Resources Commission.

When the Angel Island Immigration Station – today a museum – was slated for demolition, he served on the Chinese Cove Historical Advisory Committee to develop the preservation of the historic site and the poetry-inscribed walls of the detention barracks. In 1993 he prepared the case report that placed the Station on the National Registry of Historic Places. 

With Him Mark Lai and Thomas W. Chinn, he co-edited A History of the Chinese in California–A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), a reference work based on their identification and analysis of a wide range of historic documents, and which was prepared in response to popular and institutional demand for accurate historical information. Philip P. Choy and Him Mark Lai then co-taught the nation’s first college-level course in Chinese American history. 

He has created or consulted on numerous historical studies, publications, traveling and permanent exhibits, and media projects. With Him Mark Lai, Choy researched and produced Outlines: History of the Chinese in America (first edition 1971); Journeys Made...Journeys to Come: A Pictorial History of the Chinese in America (2001), and, as a KRON six-part television series, the early masterwork documentary, Gam Saan Haak – The Chinese of America. 2007 saw the first publication of his new book-length study, Canton Footprints: Sacramento’s Chinese Legacy.

The Architecture of San Francisco Chinatown

by Philip P. Choy    ISBN 978-1-885864-38-3

CHSA Museum booklets are available in the CHSA Publications catalog