Dragon Gate San Francisco

This guide to the Dragon Gate in San Francisco's Chinatown opens on its chaotic 1970 unveiling, when protesters demanding housing tried to drown out a vice president from Taiwan and the city's mayor. It reaches back to 1953, when a local writer's contest-winning essay first proposed an archway here, and traces the decade of stalled funding and a design contest limited to Chinese American architects that finally got it built. Look for the two carved lions flanking the arches, cast in Taiwan and shipped over with the tile and roofing.