Predecessors in Seattle Chinese immigrants first came to the
Pacific Northwest in the 1850s, and by the 1860s, some had settled in Seattle. The first in the city was
Chin Chun Hock, a
domestic worker who arrived in 1860 and later founded a general store and hotel. By 1873, there was an estimated 100 Chinese residents in Seattle, out of the city's total population of 2,000. The first Chinese quarters were near
Yesler's Mill on the waterfront, which included several business that opened in the late 1860s. The Chinese quarter grew to include residences and shifted uphill from the waterfront into leased buildings around Washington Street. However, some took shelter with Native Americans on the reservations while others came under the protection of white employers and a judge. The
Great Seattle Fire of 1889 further hindered the community. Eventually, the Chinese re-established new quarters farther inland, along Washington St. and Second Avenue South.
Japanese Americans developed Nihonmachi, or
Japantown, on Main Street, two blocks north of King Street. By the mid-1920s, Nihonmachi extended from 4th Avenue along Main to 7th Avenue, with clusters of businesses along Jackson, King, Weller, Lane, and Dearborn streets.
20th century The Jackson Regrade began in 1907; workers leveled hills and used the resulting fill to reclaim tidal flats, making travel to downtown easier. As downtown property values rose, the Chinese were forced to other areas. By the early 1900s, a new Chinatown began to develop along King Street. led a group of Chinese Americans to form the Kong Yick Investment Company, a
benefit society. Their funding and efforts led to the construction of two buildings—the
East Kong Yick Building and the
West Kong Yick Building. Meanwhile,
Filipino Americans began arriving to replace the Chinese dock workers, who had moved inland. According to
Pamana I, a history of Filipino Americans in Seattle, they settled along First Hill and the hotels and boarding houses of Chinatown and Japantown beginning in the early 1920s. They were attracted to work as contract laborers in agriculture and
salmon canneries. Among them was Filipino author
Carlos Bulosan, who wrote of his experiences and those of his countrymen in his novel
America Is In The Heart (1946). By the 1930s, a 'Manilatown' had been established near the corner of Maynard and King. After the war, many returned to the Pacific Northwest but relocated to the suburbs or other districts in Seattle. A remaining vestige of the old community is the office of the
North American Post, a Japanese-language newspaper founded in 1902. Another is the Panama Hotel, which was proclaimed a National Treasure in 2015 with a prior listing on the U.S.
National Register of Historic Places.
Maneki, one of the oldest Japanese restaurants in the United States, reopened in its storage space after its original building was looted and vandalized during the war. Uwajimaya, originally a Japantown store, moved down the hill into Chinatown. African Americans moved to Seattle in the
Great Migration, mostly out of the South, to work in the war industry during
World War II, occupying many of the houses left vacant by the internment of the Japanese Americans. They filled the empty businesses along Jackson Street with notable jazz clubs. In 1951, Seattle Mayor
William D. Devin proclaimed the area "International Center" because of the diversity of people who resided and worked in the vicinity. Businesswoman and later city councilwoman
Ruby Chow and others criticized the use of "international" for masking Chinese American history. The use of "International District" by the city remains controversial. Seattle's first neighborhood advocacy group, the Jackson Street Community Council, opposed the construction of an interstate highway through the area. Ethnic Asians formed new civic organizations (as compared to the traditional Chinese family associations, tongs and social clubs) serve needs ranging from community health, care of the elderly, information and referrals, counseling, historic preservation, marketing of the area, and building low-income housing. The construction of the
Kingdome in 1972 further boxed in the neighborhood, leading to renewed protests over the community's lack of representation, including an impromptu demonstration at the stadium's groundbreaking ceremony on November 2, 1972. With the
fall of Saigon in 1975, a new wave of immigrants from Vietnam and
Southeast Asia established Seattle's Little Saigon east of I-5. Many of these immigrants were of Chinese descent. Vietnamese
pho was introduced to the city in 1982 with the opening of
Phở Bắc, a restaurant most famous for its boat-like shape. Meanwhile, Little Saigon gained its first grocery store with the opening of
Viet-Wah in 1981; it was joined by Lam's Seafood Market in 1991 and Hau Hau Market in 1995. The worst mass murder in the history of Seattle took place at the
Wah Mee Club on Maynard Alley on February 18, 1983. Thirteen people were killed. In 1986, a portion of Chinatown and Japantown was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places as the "Seattle Chinatown Historic District." That year the
Wing Luke Memorial Museum moved to 7th Avenue, a location it would occupy for two decades. In 1999, the
City Council approved the "Chinatown/International District Urban Village Strategic Plan" for the future of the neighborhood. This plan, agreed to by all major organizations in the CID, led to City Ordinance 119297. This ordinance enshrined the three neighborhoods of Chinatown, Japantown, Little Saigon and the Chinatown Historic District into one larger neighborhood with a compromised name. Since then, the often conflicting interests of development, preservation and the conversion of old buildings to low-income housing have clashed as office developments (e.g., Union Station) and market-rate housing developments are overwhelmed by drastic increases in low-income housing stock. In addition, controversy erupted over vacating S. Lane Street as part of a large redevelopment by the private business Uwajimaya. Protesters formed the Save Lane Street organization and insisted as business owners they supported re-development, but opposed vacating a public street for a private business use. After losing a lawsuit filed over the matter, the Save Lane Street group dissolved. Activist groups also fought an attempt to build a
McDonald's at the entrance of the neighborhood, which resulted in the company's withdrawal.
21st century , 2005 Construction on a
paifang for the neighborhood began in 2006 and the
Historic Chinatown Gate was unveiled on February 9, 2008. It stands at the west end of South King Street. It is 45 feet tall and made from steel and plaster. The Wing Luke Museum moved to the
East Kong Yick Building in 2008. in 2019 As part of projects intended to maintain the identity of the neighborhood, the
Seattle Department of Transportation installed
bilingual street name signs at its intersections starting in the summer of 2013. The Chinatown and Japantown neighborhoods received them with the initial installation; the Little Saigon neighborhood did not have the signs installed until August 2016. The signs feature a top section with the street's legal English names in white on a green background and a bottom section with white translated text in the neighborhoods' respective native languages on a brown background;
traditional Chinese is featured in Chinatown while
Japanese is featured in Japantown, with
Vietnamese featured in Little Saigon. On February 28, 2019, police officers arrested five spa owners/operators and conducted a raid on 11
massage parlors, the majority of them on South Jackson Street within the neighborhood, in connection with an investigation into an alleged
prostitution and
money-laundering scheme that began in January 2015. 26
Chinese women, ranging in age from their late 20s to early 60s, were removed from the parlors; many of them were new arrivals that were not fluent in English. According to police and court documents, many of the women worked 14-hour shifts for six to seven days per week in decrepit conditions.
Rise of homelessness and exodus The neighborhood has experienced
gentrification since the early 2000s owing to a dramatic increase in overall demand for real estate development in the city. A May 2016 report from the National Coalition of Asian Pacific American Community Development revealed that overall city rents outgrew incomes by 45 percent from 2000 to 2014. As a result, a significant portion of its long-time residents have been displaced from their residences due to their inability to pay the increased rent, subsequently enduring
homelessness due to the insufficient amount of
affordable housing in the neighborhood. The Nickelsville
homeless encampment, established in 2008, moved in September 2014 to a site on South Dearborn Street opposite the onramp to northbound
Interstate 5. The property owner evicted the encampment in February 2016 after its leader was ousted the year before due to on-site conflict, invalidating the agreement made with the owner; 16 remaining residents were cleared out peacefully on March 11. In a bid to address the city's worsening
homeless crisis, Mayor
Ed Murray announced on February 8, 2017, that the city would open a
24/7 homeless shelter similar to the
navigation center opened by officials in San Francisco in 2015. After a search dating back to the previous June, the city selected the Pearl Warren Building on 12th Avenue South in the Little Saigon area, which was already hosting a traditional men's homeless shelter at the time. The selection was received with mixed to negative reaction from the Little Saigon community; many in the community were surprised by the announcement, claiming that the city did not ask them for input. While members stated that they were understanding of the need to handle the crisis, they held concerns about the potential for crime and sanitation issues. Backlash from the community, which included letters sent to him and protests outside
Seattle City Hall, prompted Murray to announce on April 24 that he would halt the project until he could devise a plan that would satisfy community members. The center opened on July 12 with 75 beds and within its assigned budget of $2.7 million. Impromptu encampments were still prevalent within the neighborhood. After city officials cleared an encampment of around 20 shelters in a neighboring stairwell on April 22, 2020. Many campers migrated one block over to South Weller Street, which was lined with more than 30 shelters. The clearing occurred despite strict guidelines put in place with the
COVID-19 pandemic due to the difficulty encountered by the
Seattle Police Department in patrolling the stairwell. , there were 15 encampments around the area, with severe public safety issues surrounding their presence cited as a major reason for a mass exodus of businesses from the neighborhood. More than 19 businesses had shuttered operations in the area in that year, with Viet Wah's closure on September 30 among the most notable occurrences. In an editorial regarding the Little Saigon section for
The Seattle Times, an executive director of a local nonprofit (that also elected to move out) argued that private developers were contributing to the exodus by neglecting to maintain their properties in seeking a market rebound. According to a 2021 economic study of the neighborhood section, it was “rated as having high risk for displacement” owing to rapid residential growth, with around 1,145 new housing units built over the past four years. In 2023, it was the first neighborhood in the state to be included in the
National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual list of
America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The
Chinatown neighborhood in
Philadelphia was also included in the list, with the organization noting that less than half of such neighborhoods were still remaining out of 83 identified nationwide. == Culture ==