Chinatown: Sing Chong Co.

In 1907 Sing Chong Co. owner Look Tin Eli hired architects Ross and Burgren to build the pagoda-themed Sing Chong building on the NW corner of California/Grant, directly across California from their similar Sing Fat building. Sing Chong is listed in the 1908 Crocker-Langley city directory but not in the 1907 edition. The two iconic buildings appear in countless Chinatown postcards, often with a cable car climbing California between them as in Modern Lithograph 9 below. Some Sing Chong ephemera is here.



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The captions of the Weidner and Britton & Rey cards cite location "California and Dupont", while the Bardell and Benham cards say "California St. and Grant Ave." Dupont from Market to Bush was renamed Grant in 1886, and as Chinatown was rebuilt after the fire Dupont north of Bush was officially renamed Grant in 1908. But use of the former name continued for many years, and over a century later it's still often Dupont Gai to locals.



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More Sing Chong views: Acmegraph 10672, Smith News 5P29835 (postmarked 11/12/1967), Smith News 103.



Steve's SF postcard pages: