Chinatown

LA's Chinatown is the second Chinatown on this site — the original (founded in the 1870s) was demolished to build Union Station, and the current neighbourhood was established in 1938 as the first planned Chinatown in America, designed by Chinese-Americans rather than imposed by outside developers. The central plaza, with its pagoda-style buildings and the neon 'Chinatown' sign, was designed to attract tourists from the nearby Union Station while providing a genuine commercial hub for the Chinese-American community.

The neighbourhood has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years — the traditional dim sum restaurants and Chinese herbalists share the streets with contemporary art galleries (the stretch of Chung King Road between Hill and Yale has become LA's most interesting gallery district), craft coffee shops, and the wine bars that signal the creative class's arrival. The tension between the heritage community and the newer arrivals is visible on every block, and Chinatown is where LA's ongoing conversation about gentrification, cultural preservation, and the economics of neighbourhood change is most visible.

Phoenix Bakery (operating since 1938, famous for its strawberry cake), Yang Chow (whose slippery shrimp is an LA classic), and the dim sum restaurants along Broadway and Hill Street provide the culinary foundation. The Chinatown Summer Nights festival and the gallery openings create periodic spikes of activity, but on a normal weekday Chinatown is one of the quieter neighbourhoods in downtown — a pocket of mid-century architecture and Chinese-American culture that is simultaneously preserving its past and negotiating its future.