Chinatown, Washington, D.C.

History

Chinese immigrants began moving into the area in the 1930s after being displaced from Washington's original Chinatown along Pennsylvania Avenue by the Federal Triangle development. They marked the new neighborhood with Chinese signage and decorative metal latticework and railings. At its peak, Chinatown extended from G Street north to Massachusetts Avenue and from 9th Street east to 5th Street. The community remained strong into the 1960s, but the 1968 riots following Martin Luther King's assassination and the subsequent decline of downtown led many Chinese residents to move to the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia.

Throughout the 1970s, the newsletter Eastern Wind published editorials and opinions about the changing neighborhood, including an open letter advocating for political engagement and a petition protesting displacement by new development plans. In the early 1980s, the D.C. government built a new convention center between 9th and 11th streets, displacing more Chinese residents. The Wah Luck House apartments were built in 1982 at 6th and H Streets to accommodate the displaced.

In 1986, the city dedicated the Friendship Archway, a traditional Chinese gate, in collaboration with sister city Beijing. The MCI Center was completed in 1997, and by 2000 AsianWeek stated that the neighborhood "barely" remains.

Demographics

In 2010, the census tract containing Chinatown had around 3,000 residents, with only 21% Asian, compared to 1990 when it was 66% Asian and 20% African American. Washington's Chinatown is relatively small compared to those in San Francisco and Manhattan. About half of Chinatown's residents live in the Wah Luck House, which has 153 units. The closest Chinese supermarket, Great Wall Supermarket, is fourteen miles west in Falls Church, Virginia.

After the 1968 riots, many Chinese moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland. In 1970, roughly 3,000 Chinese residents lived in Chinatown; by 2016, fewer than 600 remained, many of them seniors in two low-income housing developments. North Potomac, Maryland, is 18.4% Chinese American, the highest in the Washington metropolitan area. Rockville, Maryland, is eight percent Chinese American. In Virginia, sizable Chinese American communities are in Centreville, Chantilly, and Floris.

Cityscape

District of Columbia law requires businesses in the Chinatown zone to display names in Chinese characters, in either Traditional or Simplified Chinese scripts. The Friendship Archway, a paifang designed by Alfred Liu, was commissioned by the D.C. government and constructed beginning in June 1986. The project faced criticism from Lawrence Locke of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and other residents aligned with the Republic of China on Taiwan, who objected to influence from the People's Republic of China. The CCBA had planned a different paifang but announced in 1988 that it had abandoned the idea.