Chinese Restaurant, San Francisco, California

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

A tall building front with three tiers of deep ornamented balconies running the length of the facade, hung with lanterns and signage, photographed from across the street. Figures stand along the balconies and on the pavement below. This is the celebrated balconied restaurant architecture of Chinatown, built out over the sidewalk.

There is a discrepancy printed on the object itself: the mount is headed Marysville, California, while the caption places the subject in San Francisco. The most likely explanation is that the publisher was based in Marysville — a Sacramento Valley town with a substantial Chinese community of its own — and issued views of both cities under a mount printed with the firm’s home town. The archive records the discrepancy rather than resolving it.

The building is the kind of structure that gave Chinatown its silhouette in the popular imagination, and the kind that was gone after 1906.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

Marysville, California.
[cursive publisher imprint, not fully legible] Publisher.
No. 145 - Chinese Restaurant, San Francisco, Cal.

Historical context

Marysville, in Yuba County, had one of California’s most significant Chinese communities outside San Francisco; its Bok Kai Temple, dedicated in 1880, remains in use. Smaller regional publishers commonly issued views of San Francisco alongside local subjects.

What is not known

• The publisher’s name is in cursive and is not legible with confidence in the source photograph; it should be read directly from the object.
• The relationship between the Marysville heading and the San Francisco caption is inferred, not stated.
• The specific restaurant is not named.