Showing posts with label Chinese history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese history. Show all posts

Monday, December 1, 2014

The Pekin Noodle Parlor: Not a Brothel!

Butte’s Chinese community settled on the block bordered by West Mercury, South Main, West Galena, and Colorado streets in the late nineteenth century. Dwellings, club rooms, laundries, restaurants, and stores selling Chinese goods crowded its thoroughfares and alleyways. Butte attorney F. T. McBride built the Pekin Noodle Parlor building at 117 South Main on speculation in 1909. Hum Yow moved his Mercury Street noodle parlor to the second floor of the new building and soon owned the property.

Upstairs noodle parlors were common in urban Chinese communities, and the Pekin’s central stair and neon sign has long beckoned both Asian and Euro-American customers. Close proximity to Butte’s once-teeming red light district has long fueled local legends about the Pekin. Online reviews of the restaurant unfortunately label it a former brothel because of its seventeen curtained booths. However, these booths were a fixture in Asian restaurants across the West and simply offered diners privacy. Hum Yow’s Chinese Goods and Silks and G. P. Meinhart’s sign painting business originally occupied the two storefronts. A gambling casino operated in the basement from the 1910s to the 1950s. It was a business and family home and never housed prostitution.

For more than a century, the curtained booths in the Pekin Noodle Parlor
have provided private dining and nothing more.
Hum Yow and his wife Bessie Wong—both California-born first-generation Chinese—raised three children in the family living quarters in the building and housed immigrant lodgers as well. While it is true that the building has a basement entrance to Butte’s underground tunnel system, these tunnels were designed to provide steam heat to downtown buildings and are not what many call “Chinese tunnels.”  Butte’s tunnels sometimes provided a means of delivery for food and messages as well as steam heat, but they were not built by the Chinese nor were they exclusively used by them. (Read more about mythical “Chinese tunnels.”)

Butte's Pekin Noodle Parlor is Montana's oldest Chinese restaurant still operated by the same family.
(1979 HABS/HAER photo by Jet Lowe, Library of Congress.)
The Hums retired to California in 1952 and several more generations of the family have maintained this landmark business. It is Montana’s oldest family-operated Chinese restaurant.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Chinese Altar

Preparations are underway for the Montana Historical Society’s latest major exhibit, The Chinese in Montana: Our Forgotten Pioneers. The exhibit will feature Chinese textiles, ceramics, and cultural treasures that have never been on public exhibit. Items  include a sixteen-foot hand written banner from the Chinese Masonic Temple in Virginia City, a noodle machine from the Mai Wah Noodle Parlor in Butte, and traditional clothing. But one especially exciting item is an altar from the Chinese Masonic Temple in Helena.

The Chinese altar from Helena’s Chinese Masonic Temple is currently undergoing conservation.
When the conservator laid the altar on its back, the address “206 Clore” was discovered penciled on its underside. From the 1870s to about 1892, the address belonged to a small log cabin on what is now Park Avenue, immediately next door to the Pioneer Cabin. The tiny dwelling was one of a row labeled “Chinese.”  Whoever the occupant of the cabin was must have played some role in the altar’s installation in the Helena temple.

The altar is not only beautiful art, but it is also richly symbolic of the land left behind.  Worship in the temple was a solace to these sojourners who kept their customs, their beliefs, and adapted their lifestyles to the western frontier. Rich green, red, and gold paint is typical of Chinese furnishings.  Intricate characters flanking the altar’s sides, according to our translators, poetically glorify some long ago military hero. Carvings in the wood across the top poignantly represent the Chinese homeland. Golden silkworm moths, wings outspread, flutter among flowers; pairs of bats, their expressions peculiarly menacing, symbolize good luck.

Bats appear menacing in the altar carving but represent good luck.
The altar was a gift in 1973 of Helenan Doris Marshall who, with her husband Walter, founded the Brewery Theatre.  The altar was purchased at auction when the temple fell to urban renewal. Mrs. Marshall likely used it in a stage production and then donated it to the Montana Historical Society. And it is fortunate that she did. This rare object will be a focal point in Forgotten Pioneers, scheduled to open in May 2015.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Poacher Gulch

Tales of Chinese terraces along a remote, heavily timbered hillside in Sanders County attracted the attention of Forest Service and University of Montana archaeologists in 2006. The site was unlike any other in Montana with rock-lined terraces, moss-covered with age, spanning several hundred feet along a steep slope. Forest Service archaeologists discovered these terraces in 1979, tucked away in an obscure drainage known as Poacher Gulch. Locals firmly believed that Chinese miners built them. The moss and a tree trunk growing through an iron wheel seemed good evidence that the site was of great age.

Photo by Chris Merritt
As the local story went, Chinese workers laying tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad along the Clark Fork River in 1883, underpaid and mistreated, left their jobs to search the hills for gold and silver. It was logical, and these terraces resembled terraces Chinese farmers constructed in Idaho’s Payette National Forest. So between 1979 and 2006, the Chinese terrace theory was so convincing that it nearly became accepted as fact. Archaeologists assumed they would discover evidence of 1880s Chinese occupation, when laborers were in fact laying track along the Clark Fork. However, that is not what came to light, and it served to prove that local stories do not always match historic facts. Forest Service archaeologist Milo McCloud, University of Montana graduate student Chris Merritt, and a Passport in Time volunteer crew worked for weeks under terrible conditions in cold and rainy weather in 2007.

Photo by Chris Merritt
They found no evidence of Chinese settlement. Instead, they found thousands of tiny pieces of tarpaper, mushy wood, nails dating to the early 1900s, and the cultivation of corn on the terraces. The “Chinese terraces” of Poacher Gulch turned out to be something completely unexpected. No Chinese ever lived there. Its real inhabitants were cultivating corn for moonshine during Prohibition in the 1920s.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Thomas Marlow

The transcript of a speech given in 1989 by Peggy Marlow Guthrie outlines the life of her grandfather, Thomas Marlow. He was a prominent banker and businessman and owner of principal fundraiser for Helena’s beloved Marlow Theatre, named in his honor. As a young man in Helena, he was on the eve of marriage to Katherine Sligh, daughter of an Anaconda physician, when she died of a heart ailment. The community mourned with her bridegroom and Marlow erected a huge angel as a monument to her memory at Forestvale Cemetery.

Photo via Find a Grave
The beautiful sculpture is a dominant feature in the cemetery. Marlow later married Agnes McNamara Louise Miltz, and they had five children. The Marlows employed a Chinese cook at the family home at 626 Harrison. Peggy Guthrie writes that after many years working for the family, the elderly cook approached Marlow and asked if it would be possible to bring his nine-year-old grandson to Helena from China before he was too old to care for him. Marlow brought the youngster to Montana. The following year, the grandfather died, and the boy became the Marlows’ cook. He was small boy and could hardly see over the kitchen counter when he became the family’s head chef, but he made the best cherry pie in the entire capital city. After some years it was time for the young man to go to college. Marlow offered to pay his way, but the young man did not want to go to school; he only wanted to be a chef for the Marlow family. And so Marlow and the young man parted ways. Peggy writes that in time they reconciled and eventually the young man wanted to open his own restaurant. Marlow generously financed the young man’s venture. His name was Jerry Wong and the restaurant was the House of Wong, one of Helena’s several premier Chinese restaurants.

Update: thanks to Peggy Marlow Guthrie for the corrections.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Lombard

The town of Lombard once sat along the Milwaukee Road, between Toston and Logan, at the crossroads of the Northern Pacific. Originally known as Castle Junction, the town was founded in 1895 and renamed for the Northern Pacific’s chief engineer A. G. Lombard. Until 1930, no roads led to Lombard and it was accessible only by train and horseback. Chinese immigrant Billy Kee was mayor of Lombard and built a two-story hotel in 1897 called the High Point Inn.

The High Point Inn. Photo via Following the Lieutenant.
According to some sources, he was the cook for Senator Thomas Carter who helped him acquire the hotel in Lombard. He ran a good establishment with clean beds and a well-stocked restaurant serving meals prepared by Kee’s two Chinese cooks. The hotel featured a community bathroom with hot and cold running water. Kee was known as a “flexible” proprietor. When he retired at night, he would leave the light on for any latecomers and the cash register open. The guests would write their name in the register, put their money in the till, and take a key to a room. Mystery surrounds Kee, who became Montana’s wealthiest Chinese resident. How he amassed his wealth as a hotel proprietor is unknown. Billy, his wife, and his children eventually went back to China.

The Kee family. Photo via Following the Lieutenant.
According the several sources, he became a successful merchant, but according to another probably erroneous source, he got mixed up with the wrong political party and was beheaded. Lombard, however, flourished into the 1950s. It was a popular stopping off place for overnight guests attending dances in nearby Maudlow. Lombard’s greatest fame came in 1931, when actors and crew filming the movie “Danger Lights” descended briefly upon the tiny community. Filming was done along the Milwaukee Road in various places in Montana. Actress Jean Arthur, one of the leads, was the only female in a troupe of one hundred men that that traveled 31,000 miles shooting footage in Montana. But Lombard faded. Today, where there was once a community, nothing remains.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Mystery Ovens

There are some curious features along the historic railroad grades in Montana, particularly in Lincoln and Prairie counties. These are domed rock structures that resemble small huts. They are typically called Chinese ovens and serve as a good example of misunderstanding and faulty logic.


When Henry Villard, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, brought the line across Montana and the Northwest, he hired 15,000 Chinese as well as many Slavic and Italian workers to lay the tracks. Many believe that these domed rock features found along the Northern Pacific and other western rail routes where made by the Chinese. But these are bread ovens, and the Chinese did not make bread. The truth behind this odd idea is much more logical. Railroad laborers worked grueling hours in all kinds of weather and had little relaxation. It is little wonder that they wanted something to remind them of their homes far away. Italians could not survive without their fresh-baked bread. Every Italian home had an oven called a formello, usually outside, especially for baking bread. Bread baked in a charcoal fire has a special flavor. Thus tasty charcoal-baked bread was a staple. And so it was the Italian workers in particular, and to a lesser extent other European groups, that built these ovens to satisfy their hunger for fresh bread in the camps. It is not surprising that the ovens show little use. These camps were transient, moving frequently as the tracks spread across the Northwest. Bread ovens remain to document this dietary craving.

P.S. Here's the truth about Montana's Chinese pioneers.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Friday Photo: Doctor Huie Pock

Happy Friday, history buffs! I'll be speaking next week about Montana's Chinese pioneers. It will be a free program at the Montana Historical Society on Wednesday at 10:45. Hope you can make it!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Lot 025 M1
Huie Pock, second from left, was an herbal physician who also operated a store selling Chinese goods in Butte. Pock appears in Butte city directories listed as a physician from 1895 through 1927. His son, Quong Pock Hui, is seated on the stool. The two others are not identified.

Monday, June 4, 2012

A Persistent Myth

Stories abound across the West about “Chinese tunnels” beneath the buildings and streets of cities and towns. According to Priscilla Wegars of the University of Idaho, a foremost authority on Asian culture in the West, there is overwhelming evidence that “Chinese tunnels” are nothing more than myths. Not a single “Chinese tunnel” has ever been identified. While it is true that Chinese businesses, opium dens, and even living quarters are sometimes found in basement spaces, these in no way can be called “tunnels.” The Chinese were often targets of discrimination, but they did not live underground because of persecution as many believe. Basements were simply cheaper to rent than rooms above ground. Further, the basements of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century business blocks frequently had arched doorways leading to sidewalk vaults. These were storage or delivery areas. Lit by glass blocks turned purple with age, these mysterious vaults had nothing to do with the Chinese. Tunnel systems beneath downtown areas in Helena, Butte, Missoula, Bozeman, and elsewhere do exist; they served as steam-heat delivery systems. While sometimes steam tunnels served clandestine purposes, particularly for alcohol delivery during Prohibition, these passageways cannot be termed “Chinese tunnels.” Finally, in all settlements where mining was extensive, hand-dug tunnels often remain beneath residential neighborhoods and downtown business areas. Miners of all ethnic groups dug tunnels, and there is nothing that makes a tunnel exclusively Chinese.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this remnant of Chinese culture found in Big Timber?

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Unearthing Chinese History

Distinctly Montana recently published my article on Montana's Chinese history. Here's a tidbit:

The story of Montana’s Chinese pioneers has almost entirely escaped the state’s written history. By 1870, Chinese comprised ten percent of Montana’s population, but by the mid-1950s, few remained. Their homes and businesses fell victim to urban renewal programs. Time erased their remote mining and railroad camps. Traces of their culture disappeared, and their stories have become the stuff of myth and legend. In 2008, Big Timber gave up some information about its Chinese residents.  University of Montana archaeology graduate students, led by Justin Moschelle and Chris Merritt, uncovered a Chinese restaurant and laundry next to a brothel. Historic maps confirm that Chinese businesses and a “female boarding house”—the euphemism for prostitution—operated in the neighborhood in the early 1900s. Western red light districts and Chinese settlements, both housing outcast populations, were often adjacent. Volunteers working on the Big Timber project unearthed 35,000 artifacts, which comprise Montana’s only known Chinese deposit of the 1930s and 1940s. Among the artifacts are shards of pottery and porcelain, a bluing ball used in laundry operations, Chinese game pieces, and one very curious item. Intentionally placed beneath the doorframe of the entryway was a domestic cat’s paw. Likely some kind of talisman, its placement remains a mystery.


The crew also accessed Big Timber’s tunnels, which locals insist are Chinese. But in Big Timber as in other communities, passageways dubbed “Chinese tunnels” provide convenient access or under sidewalk storage. While they might have been used by Chinese residents, others used them too, and nothing makes these passageways exclusively Chinese.