May 4, 1887: San Jose's Chinatown Burns

May 4 1887, a fire ripped through the Second Market Street Chinatown in San Jose, destroying the neighborhood. Part of a wave of anti-Chinese violence, this was the third time fire had destroyed one of San Jose’s Chinatowns, previously burned down in 1870 and 1872.

Built after the Vine Street fire in 1872, the Second Market Street Chinatown was the largest yet. Over 1,500 lived in the few square blocks, a majority of San Jose’s few thousand Chinese residents. Dozens of Chinese owned businesses, a temple and theatre were quickly established.

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s Chinese residents of San Jose were constantly harassed and attacked, subjected to the same vile treatment and pogroms that Chinese people throughout California and the U.S. faced.

In 1886, the city eye’d the neighborhood for development, to move businesses closer to downtown and to remove Chinese residents. That same year San Jose hosted a statewide “Anti-Chinese Convention.” A boycott of Chinese labor was planned by city officials and business leaders.

The Mayor of San Jose, Charles Breyfogle, and the city council voted to demolish the Second Market Street Chinatown. Almost immediately after the vote, before any “official” city action was taken, a fire was set that rapidly burned down the neighborhood.

The day after the fire, the San Jose Daily Herald published a disturbingly victorious headline: “Chinatown is dead. It is dead forever.” Despite the destruction and the attempt to run Chinese residents out of town, two separate, smaller Chinatowns emerged after the fire.

One new Chinatown emerged a couple blocks from the San Jose Woolen Manufacturing Company, which employed many Chinese workers, and ultimately featured a Chinese theater, restaurants, two joss houses, commercial a laundromat, a warehouse, and a brothel.

Another was constructed after Chinese merchants, working with sympathetic German businessman John Heinlen, planned to build a new Chinatown on his farmland a few blocks away. The Heinlenville Chinatown thrived until the 1930s when it was demolished and turned to a storage yard.

In 2021, the city of San Jose issued an “apology” for years of Chinese discrimination and persecution. Last year, Heinlenville Park was established in an attempt to memorialize the history of the Chinatown that existed there for decades.