Sam Kee Building

Built in 1913 at Carrall and Pender streets near Vancouver’s Chinatown, the Sam Kee Building is renowned for its extreme narrowness, created after the city expropriated most of businessman Chang Toy’s lot for a street-widening project. Rather than abandon the reduced site, he commissioned a mixed-use building with shops, rooms above, and public baths below, using a steel frame, bay windows, and a basement under the sidewalk to make the tiny footprint practical. Long seen as a defiant response to discrimination and pressure on Chinese-owned property, it later was restored and remains valued as both a heritage site and a symbol of Chinatown’s resilience.

British Columbia · Canada