Pittsburgh Chinatown

Primary Resources:

Addresses of all important buildings in Chinatown during the 1930s:

1. 524 Third Ave: Sun Wah Shing – home of ‘doctor’ Yee Voi Wah.
2. 522 Third Ave: On Leong Merchants Association
3. 520 Third Ave: Quong Ye Tang – Chinese grocery store which was the hub and nerve centre of Chinatown. Where community building happened for Cantonese newcomers. This became the Chinatown inn
4. Fourth of July parade- interaction with lo-funs was common
5. Chong Lee: 518 Third Ave- another grocery store. It was also where the Chinese
6. Consolidated Benevolent Association (C.C.B.A). The ruling ‘government’ of Chinatown.

Mapping Pittsburgh’s Photographic History (retrographer)

• Chinese Laundry 1939
• Chinese Grocers 1921
• Chinese Merchants Association 1921
• Second Ave Business 1921
• Boulevard of the Allies 1922
• Chinatown
• Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection
• ArcGIS Historic Maps of Pittsburgh
• Urban Redevelopment Authority Photographs: Frank Yee Chinese Laundry and Yee York Young Chinese Laundry

Video Short

• “Pittsburgh’s Lost Chinatown”
• “The Last Mayor of Chinatown”
• Remembering Pittsburgh’s Chinatown | Explore a lost neighborhood!

Historic Pittsburgh site

• Second Avenue Businesses
• The Bulletin index (Pittsburgh Chinatown unofficial mayor Willie Yot)
• Tangent: an acknowledgment of Pittsburgh’s miniature Chinatown (1948) 

American History Association (San Francisco, in January)

• Engaging Data in the History Classroom
• Bunk : “Bunk sets out to capture this passion for the past surging all around us, and to reveal the ways that people of different backgrounds and purposes are connecting with the nation’s history.”
• Frisco Bound
• Immigration
• How a California Archive Reconnected a New Mexico Family with its Chinese Roots

Boulevard of the Allies After WWII before and after smoke control to clean up some air pollution:

https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt%3AMSP285.B021.F17.I02

https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt%3AMSP285.B021.F16.I02

Newspapers

• Second Avenue Colony Deserted; Penn Avenue at Twelfth Street To Be Pittsburgh’s Chinatown
• Photos of the Chinatown Inn and see one here showing the building with On Leong Labor and Merchant’s Association placard on upper floor

THE CHINESE IN PITTSBURGH, A CHANGING MINORITY COMMUNITY IN THE UNITED STATES

On Leong Chinese Merchants Association