Washington Street
The Heart and Soul of Stockton Chinatown
The Loss of Chinatown
Stockton’s once thriving Chinatown, the second largest in California, was a casualty of urban redevelopment.
In 1949, the federal government passed the Housing Act. Part of the Act provided one billion dollars in loans and grants for cities to acquire slums and blighted areas for public or private redevelopment. It also funded the construction of public housing. The Housing Act described “blight” as areas in economic decline or made up of racially mixed neighborhoods.
Members of the Chinese community started moving out of Chinatown in the 1950s and buying houses in North Stockton. Store owners in Chinatown saw a decline in the number of shoppers and suffered financially. Instead of going to Chinatown, they shopped at their neighborhood supermarkets. Stockton’s middle-class white citizens saw the West End as a “skid row” because most of the residents were poor, working-class minorities.
Courtesy of the Bank of Stockton
In 1954, Mayor Dean DeCarli established the Committee on Urban Blight to look at problems with law enforcement, alcoholism, and public health in Stockton’s West End. Angelo Sanguinetti, a West End pharmacist, as well as a former mayor and civic leader, served as its chairperson. The committee recommended clearing the area to eliminate blight and stimulate economic revitalization. In later reports, the committee thought the area had the potential to be a “high class development.” However, it also expressed concern that further demolition of the area without a specific rebuilding program would harm the area.
Washington Square Park, 1950s.
Does this neighborhood appear to need to be rebuilt?
Photo courtesy of the Bank of Stockton
In 1956, the city created the West End Redevelopment Project, which targeted Stockton’s West End and central business district. The Planning Commission and Redevelopment Agency recommended the total demolition of the downtown area. In 1960, Stockton received $5.3 million dollars in federal funds to redevelop the West End. Angelo Sanguinetti strongly opposed total demolition and resigned from the Urban Blight Committee. In response, he organized the Committee for Rehabilitation, made up of West End business owners who believed the buildings should be rehabilitated. Over time, opposition to the demolition project from the public and civic leaders increased. Eventually, the city decided to tear down a nine-block area bounded by Weber Avenue and Commerce, Hunter, and Washington Streets. Businesses in the area each received $3,000 to relocate (equal to $24,135 in 2017). The low-income communities living in the neighborhood’s hotels and apartment buildings were notoriously compensated with 8′ by 5′ dormitory housing to live in near French Camp, four miles away. Most of the migrant farm workers and Port of Stockton longshoreman were unable to find affordable housing in the wake of the neighborhoods destruction.
Courtesy of the Bank of Stockton
The Urban Blight Committee took the City of Stockton to court in 1961 over the redevelopment project. It would take several years before the matter was settled. Demolition of the nine-block area did not officially begin until May 18, 1965. On February 14, 1966, the Stockton Daily Evening Record reported that the area looked like “a bombed out World War II section of London.”
In the photo to the left, which shows downtown Stockton looking South, one can see that most of the neighborhood to the West and North of St. Mary’s Church was demolished. This region comprised much of Stockton’s historic Chinatown, Little Manila, and Japan Town.
In all, forty-four businesses, fifty-nine single residents, and nine families relocated from the West End. Although city officials assumed the area was made up of transients, vagrants, or seasonal workers, the majority of the residents had been living at the same addresses for nearly a decade. Instead of creating public housing and revitalizing downtown areas, the Housing Act of 1949 only created the dis-invested neighborhoods it was designed to prevent.
