San Francisco Chinatown

 

Harriet Gene Roudebush

  1908 - 1998 (biography)

c. 1940  

etching 

4 x 2 15/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

not stated 

pencil titled 

 

textured ivory wove 

published 

artist 

22350 

$75.00 

The Sing Chong building at Grant Ave. and California St. is easily the most recognizable building in Chnatown, and is the oldest piece of Chinese-style architecture in San Francisco, built in 1907. The designer, however, was Scottish: Thomas Patterson Ross, one of the first architects to help rebuild the city after the earthquake of 1906. He had the help of proprietor and First Bank of Canton founder Look Tin Eli, whose dream of creating a "city within the city" drove the establishment of Chinatown as a tourist destination. Here, it is depicted with another classic San Francisco feature: the cable car.