FOR A TOURIST ATTRACTION Chinatown is ideally situated, near the downtown shopping district and the City's hotels. But what if the racial composition of the east side of Nob Hill were largely black? Far fetched? Perhaps not. After all, Hunters Point almost became Chinatown.
In 1906, the destruction of Chinatown by fire was considered a great blessing of the Earthquake. Many felt it should have burned long before. Said the Overland Monthly, "Fire has reclaimed to civilization and cleanliness the Chinese ghetto, and no Chinatown will be permitted in the borders of the city.... it seems as though a divine wisdom directed the range of the seismic horror and the range of the fire god. Wisely, the worst was cleared away with the best."
Before the Earthquake, Chinatown, even then a major tourist attraction, competed for notoriety with the neighboring Barbary Coast. Chinatown abounded in opium dens and gambling and about 1000 slave prostitutes worked the area. Most Chinese, however, were quite respectably kept busy in sweat shops, as souvenir shop proprietors, laundrymen and comparatively well paid servants. Many lived in airless cellars that sheltered up to 500 people; about 25,000 Chinese lived in 12 square blocks. (Today there are close to 50,000 packed into the same area.)
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