Heinlen was born in 1815 in Germany, immigrated to the United States in 1817, and lived in Pennsylvania and Bucyrus, Ohio, before moving to California in 1852.

[12] In 1887, ten days after the Market Street Chinatown was destroyed by arson, John Heinlen began planning a new home for the city's Chinese residents on a 5-acre (2.0 ha) pasture he owned near the affluent Hensley neighborhood.

The city rejected his application for a building permit, but his son Goethe successfully fought the injunction on his father's behalf.

To protect residents against attacks, a tall wooden fence was erected around the neighborhood and topped with barbed wire.

It also drew Japanese migrants to the area, giving rise to a Japantown on Sixth Street[17] that eventually expanded to the west.

[18] At its peak, Heinlenville had a population of 4,000, making it the largest Chinese community in the United States outside of San Francisco.

[19] The city wanted the Heinlenville enterprise to fail so that the Chinese population would move to Woolen Mills, but the reverse happened in 1902.

[22][4] While white neighbors rarely visited the enclave, its restaurants were popular with Japanese families on weekends, and African Americans rented rooms in Chinese-run boarding houses there.

The city razed the entire neighborhood, except for the Ng Shing Gung building, to make way for a municipal corporation yard.

[25] The Hip Sing Tong sued to stop the city's planned demolition of the Ng Shing Gung.

[28][29] In 1991, the Ng Shing Gung temple was reconstructed in History Park in San Jose and is now a museum containing artifacts from Heinlenville.

[30] In March 2008, the Anthropological Studies Center at Sonoma State University partnered with the Redevelopment Agency of San Jose to conduct an archaeological excavation of the former Heinlenville site.