About this Item
Two albumen prints, each approximately 7¾ x 9½ inches and mounted on card stock 11½ x 14 inches. Images a bit faded. Mounts lightly soiled and wavy. Upper left corner of mount of second image with a small chip. Overall very good. Two photographs of elegant Chinese restaurants in pre-earthquake San Francisco Chinatown, likely taken in the mid-1880s. The first photograph depicts the Woey Sin Low restaurant's third-floor balcony, looking past hanging glass lanterns and an ornately carved wooden window onto the corner of Dupont and Clay Streets. In front of the restaurant, a hanging banner reads "Baobàn jiuxí," advertising that the establishment can host and arrange banquets. The second photograph has been identified as the grand dining room at another restaurant just around the corner on Washington Street, called Bun Sun Low. After a fire in 1885, Bun Sun Low's dining room was renovated into the dramatic space pictured here, with hanging chandeliers and lanterns, and intricate carvings adorning the doors, windows, walls, and even ceiling. Despite the caption, some uncertainty exists as to the identification of this second photograph - a different image of what is clearly the same room is held at the New York Public Library, which states that the restaurant in the image was located on Dupont Street rather than Washington, suggesting it may in fact be a lower floor dining room of the Woey Sin Low restaurant depicted in the previous photo. Both restaurants were long- running fixtures of Chinatown, in operation from the 1870s and present in Langley's directories from the 1880s. As neither establishment survived the earthquake and subsequent fires of 1906, it may not be possible to definitively identify the restaurant shown in the interior view. Both images were published by the prolific photography company of Isaiah West Taber, which is the source of many wonderful, if often dubiously attributed, pre-earthquake images of San Francisco. The catastrophe that leveled these beautiful restaurants was equally disastrous for Taber - his entire considerable stock of photo negatives was destroyed in the same event. An interior and exterior glimpse at some of the finest Chinese dining San Francisco had to offer in the Gilded Age, as well as evidence of the interest in the activities and aesthetics of Chinatown held by many Americans. Seller Inventory # WRCAM58913
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