Central Plaza

In 1933, after Old Chinatown was torn down for the construction of Union Station, Peter Soo Hoo envisioned a new Chinese community in Los Angeles with code-compliant buildings, wide open streets, and bans on prostitution, gambling, and opium, despite legal barriers that prevented Chinese people in California from becoming naturalized citizens or owning land. On April 22, 1937, he brought together Herbert Lapham and prominent Old Chinatown families to form the Los Angeles Chinatown Project Association, and with Lapham's help railroad land was purchased for 75 cents a square foot through native-born children who were American citizens. Architects Erle Webster and Adrian Wilson designed what is believed to be one of the first outdoor malls in America, and New Chinatown opened on June 25, 1938, with lanterns, banners, flags of the United States and the Republic of China, traditionally dressed guides, art by Tyrus Wong, Gilbert Leong, and Keye Luke, and celebrations attended by figures including Governor Frank Merriam and Anna May Wong. New Chinatown's neo-Chinese architecture featured painted balconies, tile work, carved screens, upturned roofs, and four ceremonial gates, including Central Plaza's East Gate, or Gate of Maternal Virtues, commissioned by attorney You Chung Hong to honor his mother and all mothers. Just inside the East Gate stands a statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the ideological father of modern China and first president of the Republic of China, who had ties to Los Angeles after being smuggled into Southern California in 1905, honored at a fundraising banquet in Old Chinatown, and supported there as young men were urged to join his cause. Eventually, more than 2,000 troops were smuggled from this country into China to fight for the overthrow of the Manchu government and the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, and Homer Lea, a Los Angeles High School graduate, played a major role by returning from China with a commission as a lieutenant general in the Chinese Imperial Reform Army and training future revolutionary officers in California.

Los Angeles, California · United States