Steinbeck's City To Restore 1940s Building in Chinatown
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | May 12, 2010
The Old Republic Cafe's neon sign was restored last year.
Credit: Salinas Downtown Community Board
And do you remember how an easterly breeze brought odours in from Chinatown, roasting pork and punk and black tobacco and yen shi?
And do you remember the deep blatting stroke of the great gong in the Joss House, and how its tone hung in the air so long?—John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Once heralded by John Steinbeck, the Chinatown in Salinas, Calif., has seen better days. Only a handful of historic buildings remain in the neighborhood, founded in 1893.
"It's like the Tenderloin area of Salinas," says Wellington Lee, who grew up in the city's Chinatown, once home to Chinese, Japanese and Filipino immigrants. Many of the neighborhood's buildings were demolished in the 1950s, victims of urban renewal projects, and empty lots still dot the area today. "There are only about four or five buildings [left], and some are closed up because they need a retrofit. It's small now. When I was a little kid it was bustling; it was thriving," Lee says.
Work will begin this summer on one of the last historic buildings in Chinatown, the 1940s Old Republic Café. Lee, chair of the Asian Festival that takes place in Salinas every April, helped raise $15,000 to restore the café's "Chop Suey" sign.
The city celebrated the re-lighting of the restored sign at a nighttime ceremony last October. "It was dazzling because it hadn't been on for 20 years," Lee says. "The building is quite intact. It's still in good shape, but it still needs little renovations."
"We chose this building as a beacon, a catalyst," says Gerald Cheang, co-chair of the Salinas Downtown Community Board. "The [Ahtye] family that owns it was one of the original settlers of Chinatown." The city is in the process of negotiating a long-term lease for the Old Republic Café, Cheang says.
Later this year the Old Republic Café's roof and first floor will be restored with the help of a $250,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The café is scheduled to reopen in May 2012 as a museum and cultural center. The next step will be to transform the building next door, a former boarding house, into artists' studios.
Salinas' Chinatown is in the spotlight this month at an exhibit at the nearby National Steinbeck Center. "Asian Community Encounters: Chinese in Salinas' Chinatown," which opened last month and runs through July, examines the area from 1893 through the 1960s.
The $336,000 restoration of the Old Republic Café is part of the Chinatown Renewal Project, a collaboration between the City of Salinas, California State University Monterey Bay, and the Salinas Downtown Community Board.
"This project hopefully will be a strong, clear statement to the ethnic community that we want to honor and celebrate their significance," says Ken Feske, Chinatown Renewal Project director. "They've had a lot of promises over the years. The project is to let them know that we really value their legacy."
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