Ano-nonsense brick structure built in 1910 to house Chinese laborers, the East Kong Yick Building lacked the kind of architectural features that provide excitement when an old building becomes a museum. No grand staircases, gorgeous detailing, or lovely materials here. Yet the simple building and its cramped rooms for struggling immigrants represented treasured assets of the new Wing Luke Asian Museum, a community-based institution in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District dedicated to examining diverse Asian cultures and named after the first Asian-American elected to citywide office in the Pacific Northwest. Capturing the meaning of these spaces while carving out modern facilities for a 57,000-square-foot museum was the key challenge facing Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen (OSKA) Architects as it renovated and converted the old building.
Built by a group of 170 Chinese Americans who pooled their resources, the East Kong Yick and its sibling structure just to the west of a narrow lane called Canton Alley, provided housing for immigrant workers on their upper floors and retail space at street level. Waves of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino laborers lived there between jobs in Alaska’s fish canneries, on Washington farms, and on construction projects throughout the West. The men booked passages across the Pacific at the shipping-line counter in the Yick Fung Co. shop on the ground floor of the west building and gathered at a family association hall on the third floor of the east building. By the 1970s, though, the living accommodations upstairs in the east building no longer met the city’s building code, so they were boarded up; for nearly 30 years, only the ground-floor shops remained in use.
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