History of Chinese Americans in Chicago
[8] Today, the pagoda design of the sign formerly belonging to the Shanghai Restaurant, which was located in the Yukon Building on Clark Street, is the only remaining vestige of the original Chinatown community.
Chuimei Ho and Soo Lon Moy of the Chinatown Museum Foundation wrote that "there must have been others who avoided government notice.
"[3]In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tremendous growth of Chicago created immense pressures on the South Loop Chinatown, along with increased discrimination.
By 1910, estimates showed that around half of the original Chinatown residents had relocated south to Armour Square, near Cermak and Wentworth, many in search of better living conditions and lower rents.
[12] Its bold statement of Chinese presence played an instrumental role in cementing the development of Chinatown culturally and visually.
[13] At this time the neighborhood still hosted a large Italian-American community, which is still noticeable today, albeit in diminished numbers.
The 1965 Immigration Act further increased Chinese settlement, with a new wave coming from Mainland China.
A decade earlier, Chinese-American businessman and restaurateur Jimmy Wong spearheaded an unsuccessful effort to create a new Chinatown on Argyle Street in the city's Uptown neighborhood.
[16] However, Wong's mission of building a new community on the North Side was later passed onto businessman Charlie Soo, who convinced the city to renovate the derelict Argyle Red line stop and paint it in a traditional red-and-green color scheme.
The initial period of redevelopment on Argyle Street coincided with the Fall of Saigon in the 1970s, bringing a more diverse demographic - including both ethnic Chinese and other immigrants from southeast Asia - to the neighborhood than originally envisioned.
In 1986, the New York Times commented that the new "Little Saigon" had turned the formerly decrepit neighborhood into "an exotic pocket of restaurants and shops with an Indochina flavor," remarking that "[just] Four years ago Argyle Street... resembled a ghost town after dark.
Its commercial life was dominated by pimps, prostitutes, and drug pushers who assembled on unlit, crumbling sidewalks to ply their trades.
Some observers attribute this to the neighborhood's distance from the financial district, which reduces the gentrification pressures felt by communities in San Francisco and New York; while also lauding the neighborhood's tight-knit social network and city infrastructure investments, such as the new Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill-constructed Chinatown branch of the Chicago Public Library, which was completed in 2015.
[22][23] Chinese-Americans in Chicago experience high levels of income and educational attainment relative to the national average.
[27] Bridgeport, to the west of Chinatown, is home to the Ling Shen Ching Tze Buddhist temple, located in a building which was originally built in 1894 by renowned Chicago architects Burnham and Root.
[29] The temple opened in 1992 and serves a growing Chinese Buddhist community on the city's Southwest Side.
