Chinatown Central Plaza
Open-air plaza of shops built in the nineteen thirties as America's first Chinese-owned neighborhood
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Chinatown Central Plaza in Los Angeles follows engineer Peter SooHoo Senior after the city's original Chinatown was condemned to build a new train station in the 1930s, forcing families out with nowhere obvious to go under California's alien land laws. It traces the deal SooHoo struck with a railway agent for land nobody else wanted, and the twenty-eight founders who pooled their savings to build this plaza from nothing. Actress Anna May Wong planted a willow tree by the wishing pool when the plaza opened in June 1938, and tens of thousands packed these streets that day.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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