Smoking divan in Chinese restaurant, San Francisco

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

An empty interior room finished throughout in openwork carved screens and painted panels, with a hanging lamp at the centre, low tables and stools along the walls, and painted panels of blossoming branches set into the partition at the rear.

No one is in the room. Of the three Watkins restaurant and temple interiors in this collection, this is the one made purely as a record of decoration — the fittings of a Chinatown restaurant photographed as an interior, in the way a photographer would record any well-appointed room.

The carved and painted joinery in this frame was made or imported at real expense. The image is evidence of a prosperous commercial interior at a moment when Chinese business in San Francisco was under sustained political attack.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

WATKINS’ NEW SERIES
Of Pacific Coast Views, 427 Montgomery Street, S. F.
Photographic Views of California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Lower Cal., and the Pacific Coast, embracing Yo Semite, Big Trees, Geysers, Mount Shasta Mining, City, etc., etc.  Views made to order in any part of the State or Coast.
3760
Smoking divan in Chi[nese] [r]estaurant, S. F.

Historical context

Chinatown restaurants were among the few spaces where non-Chinese San Franciscans routinely entered Chinese-run establishments, and they became a standard stop on the guided “Chinatown tours” marketed to visitors from the 1870s onward.

What is not known

• Part of the printed caption is obscured in the source photograph and is transcribed with brackets.
• The restaurant is not named on the object.
• Date range inferred from the New Series and the 427 Montgomery Street address.