In 1892, Frederic Masters published a survey of Chinatown temples where he made two claims about Tin How Temple on Waverly Place that significantly shaped modern perceptions of the temple’s history. Masters, the head of the Methodist Chinese Mission in San Francisco, appeared to have deep personal familiarity with many of the temples he described, giving his assertions a sense of credibility that have been difficult to dismiss. When discussing Tin How Temple, Masters described it as “the oldest Joss-house in San Francisco,” claiming it had been “erected over forty years ago,” and explicitly identified it as “the property of the Sam Yap Company.”

As Ho and Bronson have recently argued, however, neither the claims regarding Tin How Temple’s age nor its affiliation with the Sam Yup Association are supported by historical documentation. Instead, they argue that the temple functioned independently, like several other contemporaneous Chinese American temples in San Francisco, and was most likely only occasionally used by Sam Yup members. Moreover, Ho and Bronson find no evidence supporting a founding date earlier than the late 1870s.

Additional evidence supports Ho and Bronson’s conclusions. In 1868, nearly twenty years after the reputed founding date implied by Masters, the Sam Yup Association is documented as owning buildings on Clay and Sacramento Streets and leasing office space on Commercial Street, yet there is no mention of property ownership or tenancy on Waverly Place. Further, an 1880 city tax assessment locates a Sam Yup joss house at 825 Dupont Street [#15], suggesting no clear institutional connection to Tin How Temple, which is already documented as operating on Waverly Place by this time. Taken together, this evidence undermines the recurring claim, first proposed by Masters, that Tin How Temple was founded in the early 1850s, contemporaneous with the formation of the Sam Yup Association and, moreover, that it was used as the company’s original and primary joss house.

Notably, we can also add that between July 1872 and March 1873, the building at 33 Waverly – the same address associated with Tin How Temple prior to the 1906 earthquake – appeared repeatedly in city newspapers as a residential property available for lease [Fig 4]. Nothing suggests the building was being used as a temple at this time. In April 1874, public notice was given that the property had been leased for three years at $100 per month to an unnamed Chinese man [Fig. 5]. It remains unknown what role, if any, this individual played in transforming 33 Waverly into Tin How Temple, but the property was apparently sold before the lease agreement expired. As documented by Ho and Bronson, the building at 33 Waverly was sold in July 1876 by J. L. Eoff to a legal entity listed simply as “Tin How” for $15,000 [Fig. 6]. This transaction constitutes the earliest known documentary reference to what would become Tin How Temple. The property was sold again in 1879 to an otherwise unknown individual named Ly Haung, for the same price of $15,000.

New evidence suggests a critical role of the Hip Yee Society. As reported in the San Francisco Call, but not in the San Francisco Examiner referenced by Ho and Bronson, Ly Haung simultaneously purchased a second property in 1879 on Washington Place from the Hip Yee Society for $5,000. The timing of Ly Huang’s two transactions for buildings on Waverly and Washington is unlikely to be coincidental. To me, it suggests the Hip Yee Society was likely conducting business under the name “Tin How,” purchasing the Waverly property in 1876 and then selling it three years later bundled with the Washington Place property. The motivations behind these sales, as well as Ly Haung’s relationship to the Hip Yee Society, remain unknown.

Notably, the Waverly and Washington Place properties remained in Ly Haung’s possession until December 1890, when he sold them both back to the Hip Yee Society, which had earlier that year formally registered under the name Hip Yee Pioneer Association of California. Regardless of the formal ownership of 33 Waverly between 1879 and 1890, the Hip Yee Society was still described in 1883 as “owning” a joss house. Because this claim appears in a discussion of Chinatown’s largest and most prominent Chinese temples, it certainly refers to Tin How Temple, which otherwise goes unmentioned. This suggests, as already proposed by Ho and Bronson, that Ly Huang could have been a member of a temple committee designated to hold the deed, rather than an wholly independent investor.

Additional evidence underscores the role of the Hip Yee Society in Tin How Temple’s early history. The strongest evidence appears in the 1878 city directory which places the Hip Yee Society temple at 33 Waverly, two years after the property’s purchase by “Tin How” in 1876. The city directory from 1877, however, locates the Hip Yee Society temple at 730 Jackson Street. What may account for this discrepancy? Critically, the 730 Jackson Street address is claimed to have housed a temple dedicated to the goddess Tianhou around this period [#28], the same deity enshrined by Tin How Temple. Then in June 1877, we encounter newspaper reports of a new temple on Waverly, “constructed from a house,” dedicated to the “Daughter of Heaven,” an inexact rendering of the name Tin How (Tianhou) [Fig. 7].

On the basis of the above documentation, it is possible to reconstruct a tentative timeline of events. In the summer of 1876, a “Tin How” organization, likely functioning as the legal arm of the Hip Yee Society, purchased 33 Waverly Place. During the renovations required to convert the former residential building into meeting rooms and a shrine hall, Hip Yee members appear to have used 730 Jackson Street, a property owned by the prominent Chinese physician Li Po Tai, either as a temporary site for the Tianhou shrine or as the location of an already-operational temple established several years earlier. Once renovations at Waverly Place were completed, the icon was transferred to its new location in June 1877, at which point the Tin How Temple was formally dedicated and opened to the public. The involvement of the Hip Yee Society is confirmed by its listing at 33 Waverly Place in the 1878 city directory. For reasons that remain unclear, the Hip Yee Society, operating under the name “Tin How,” sold the property to Ly Haung in 1879. Ly Haung retained ownership of 33 Waverly Place for the following decade before selling it back to the reorganized Hip Yee Pioneer Association.

While further research is warranted, these records suggest that the Hip Yee Society played a consequential role in founding Tin How Temple in the late 1870s on Waverly and had a substantially closer relationship with the temple than the Sam Yup Association through at least 1890.

The reasoning for Master’s claim in 1892 regarding the affiliation between the Tin How Temple and the Sam Yup Association is uncertain. Perhaps the two entities had an informal, yet very close, relationship at this time. But even this claim is diminished when looking at contemporary newspaper reports. In 1892, the same year as Master’s survey of Chinatown’s temples, the San Francisco Examiner covered the birthday celebration of Tianhou. The reporter carefully notes that, “here in San Francisco, Tin How was remembered by but one society, the California Chinese Pioneer Association,” indicating the Hip Yee Pioneer Association – and never mentioning the Sam Yup Association. Master’s assertion that the Tin How Temple was “the oldest Joss-house in San Francisco,” being “erected over forty years ago” when the Sam Yup Association first formed cannot be taken as credible without new evidence. The identity of Ly Haung may prove important in partly explaining Master’s claim, especially if he was not connected to the Hip Yee Society, but a member of the Sam Yup Association, an organization comprised mainly of merchants who would been well suited to finance an expensive property purchase. Further research may resolve these questions.

As indicated by the temple’s name, the central icon enshrined was the goddess Tianhou 天后, the Empress of Heaven, also popularly known as Mazu 媽祖. The establishment of this figure on Waverly in 1877 must have been an important event for the Chinese in the city, as a San Francisco Call article in June of that year notes the Chinese were already calling Waverly Place, “Tin How Temple Street.” The importance of this goddess was already seen through the festivities held at An Ching’s Tin How Temple on Mason Street [#X3]. Before its destruction by fire in December 1874, this Mason Street temple appears to have been Chinatown’s most significant site associated with the goddess and its loss must have left a vacuum in the religious landscape of Chinatown. In time, this void was filled by the new Tin How Temple.

Isaiah West Taber took several photos of the original, pre-earthquake two-story building (with additional basement level) housing the Tin How Temple, including one in approximately the mid-1880s, as did Treu Ergeben Hecht (see below). This building’s facade was commonly used for early twentieth century Chinatown postcards (see here), helping to establish it as a visual icon of pre-1906 Chinatown. No objects belonging to the original shrine hall appear to have survived the 1906 earthquake and fire; I also know of no surviving illustrations or photos of the original altar (although one candidate shows an incense burner inscribed with Temple of Many Saints [liesheng gong 列聖宮] as seen on the signboard above the Tin How Temple doorway, see here [also here]; see an erroneous identification here).

Given the secondary name of the Tin How Temple as the Temple of Many Saints, we may surmise multiple icons were enshrined here, likely including Guanyin, but documentation is sparse as to the content of the shrine halls previous to 1906.

After the earthquake, the Hip Yee Pioneer Association sold the lot to the Sue Hing Benevolent Society who rebuilt building Tin How Temple. It was reconstructed on roughly the same footprint of the old building, renumbered now as 125 Waverly. San Francisco guidebooks highlighting walking tours of Chinatown after reconstruction would often highlight Tin How Temple as a main attraction, along with the newly rebuilt Kong Chow Association Temple. For example, the 1914 Chamber of Commerce Handbook for San Francisco cites both as “the leading Joss Houses in San Francisco,” adding that “owing to changing faiths and ideas, no more are likely to be built” [source].

Often cited as the most wealthy and influential of all Chinese secret societies, the Chee Kong Society occupied a three-story building on Spofford since 1881, moving from 827 Washington Street. Later to be known as the Chinese Freemasons, the Chee Kong Society was politically oriented and devoted, at the time, to the overthrow of the Qing emperor. In other many regards, they were similar to other Chinese communal organizations looking to help its members prosper in the United States. According to Ho and Bronson, the Chee Kong Society continued observing similar rituals as their parent organization in China, the Heaven and Earth Society (Taindi hui 天地會). As tensions grew in San Francisco’s Chinatown due to legal, social, and economic deprivations in the 1880s and 1890s, the American public developed a lurid fascination for information about Chinatown’s “hatchet men” and their “tong wars.” The Chee Kong emerged in public consciousness as one of groups who most profited from violence and vice and in 1886 Harper’s Weekly covered the the society’s elaborate initiation rituals which took place before a religious altar. The shrine hall is not described in the text and the accompanying sketch may be fictional (see below).

After the Geary Act of 1892 extended the federal laws regarding Chinese exclusion and started requiring Chinese registration, the flames of violence were fanned, triggering a series of police raids on prominent “highbinder” headquarters and joss houses through the 1890s. This coincided with the popularization of newspaper sketch artists who often had great latitude in depicting events covered in their newspapers. In 1893, one artist dramatically amplified the violence and terror associated with Chee Kong and other secret society initiation rituals, transforming them into caricatured spectacles (see below).

If we turn away from the depiction of initiation rituals, there is very little remaining visual documentation of the Chee Kong shrine hall on Spofford before the earthquake. While two images we do possess are hasty newspaper sketches, they capture an interesting issue of legal jurisprudence concerning Chinese American religious material artifacts. After a series of police raids around Chinese New Year in 1891, newspaper reports claim Chee Kong’s main icon, Guandi, and smaller images of his two attendants Guan Ping 關平 and Zhou Cang 周倉, including other ritual artifacts, were targeted and damaged by the police. The Chee Kong organization sought legal restitution from the city and police chief in the form of $1,227. A sketch artist for the Examiner submitted two drawings of the Chee Kong altar, which was estimated to have cost $10,000, presumably before the police took axes to the shrine hall (see below).

After 1906, the Chee Kong Society rebuilt on the footprint of their old building, complete with new shrine hall.

Opened by the early 1880s, the Guanyin Temple was located on the top floor of a three-story brick building on the southwest corner of Spofford Alley and Washington Street. The temple is curiously missing form both the 1885 Supervisors’ map and the 1887 Sanborn map. Nevertheless, in 1883, a Guanyin shrine is cited as located on the “contracted upper floor of a small building on Washington.” Frederic Masters, writing in 1892, notes the shrine hall was atop a “dingy staircase” that held a “rudely carved image and grimy vestments.” According to Masters, the space held an assortment of other figures, including the God of Medicine (Huatuo 華佗), the Grand Duke of Peace (Suijing Bo 绥靖伯), and Tsai Tin Tai Shing (Qitian dasheng 齊天大聖, otherwise known as the Monkey King, Sun Wukong 孙悟空).

Despite the popularity of Guanyin among Chinatown’s residents, we know very little about the rituals and ceremonies that took place at this small temple. Among what we do know is that sometime in the early 1880s, during the three-day birthday celebrations of Guanyin, a feast was held in her honor, inclusive of meat which seemed to surprise some onlooking Chinese, and her icon was paraded around Chinatown, leading to its installation in a Chinese theater where a performance was held in her honor. When the performance was finished in the early morning, her icon was returned to its altar on Spofford among a clamor of cymbals and cheers.

In a rare discovery, a brochure seeking funds to restore the temple has survived, dated to 1886 (guangxu 12). As discussed by Ho and Bronson, the brochure claims the temple had existed for more than thirty years at that point. It also notes the space was managed by Li Xiyi 李希意. The success of this fundraising endeavor is unknown, but the building at 60 Spofford seems to have remained in poor condition, being recommended for condemnation by the city health inspector in 1890 (city property records in 1886 cite an otherwise unknown Liebermann as the building’s owner). Regardless, the temple seems to have remained untouched as Masters attests to its divinely crowded quarters two years later. The temple also seems to have issued a weekly eight-page newsletter or newspaper in 1893, called Bun Ding, which was printed on “bright red paper and partly colored ink.” Ho and Bronson attest to the poetic writing of the fundraising brochure, speculating it could have been penned by Li Xiyi himself. Is it possible he also wrote or edited a regular weekly publication? The 1905 telephone directly still records a “Quon Yum Temple” at 60 Spofford, next to a printer.

There is very little visual record of Chinatown’s “Quon Yum Temple.” Isaiah West Taber took a photo looking north down Spofford and the temple’s round lanterns can barely be seen at the far end. Additionally, Arnold Genthe took at least one photo showing the exterior signage of this temple between 1896 and 1906 (see both below). The temple was apparently not rebuilt after 1906.

Famed Chinatown physician Li Po Tai (Li Putai 黎普泰) started this privately owned temple in 1871 after narrowly surviving a gas explosion the previous year that left him severely scarred and reputedly claimed the life of a friend. The multi-room temple, known as Eastern Glory Temple (Donghua miao 東華廟), was on the third floor of a large building on St. Louis Alley, allowing entrance from both Dupont and Jackson streets. A city directory from 1877 lists the address as 921 1/2 Dupont, which refers to a narrow alley running west off Dupont. The precise location along St. Louis, a tight alleyway named by the local Chinese as “Conflagration Alley” (Huoshao xiang 火燒巷) as early as 1877, has been difficult to determine. A map of Chinatown compiled by Henry Josiah West in 1873 placed a joss house at the 90-degree bend in St. Louis Alley [here]. Until recently, I considered this in error and Ho and Bronson’s published work also considers this inaccurate, instead placing Li Po Tai’s temple at the far rear of a building fronting Dupont Street and labelled a joss house on the 1887 Sanborn map.

The recent discovery of an oil painting by Karl Wilhelm Hahn (1829–1887) corroborates West’s placement, however. Hahn depicts St. Louis Alley looking south and shows a temple doorway on the third story of a building (see below). Rather uncharacteristically, the horizontal Chinese signboard is clearly legible, saying “Eastern Glory Temple.” Even the vertical pillar boards (yinglian 楹聯) appear to match mostly match with known textual records (and a partly obscured photograph). According to the numbering on the 1887 Sanborn map, this doorway is approximately equivalent to 4 or 5 St. Louis Alley. The Bancroft Library currently dates the painting to 1885, but we can now see Hahn’s work formed the basis for an engraving published in The Pacific Tourist, a guidebook first released in 1876 and reprinted in 1881 (see below).

Moreover, a rarely consulted report from 1873 describing the conditions of Chinatown clarifies Eastern Glory Temple occupied the entirety of the third flood of the building, spanning six rooms (an earlier Daily Alta account in 1871 noted eight rooms in total). If we consult the 1887 Sanborn map, the temple occupied a building abutting the rear of the Grand Chinese Theater, covering multiple ground-floor addresses, from 1 to 7 St. Louis Alley. The first room, furthest east, was fitted with a small door and led to a reception area while the second room sold ritual supplies such as candles and paper money. The other rooms enshrined icons. A larger second doorway toward the western end of the building, seen in Hahn’s painting, led directly to the main altar and was considered the main temple entrance.

A series of stereo-photographs taken by Eadweard Muybridge offer clear, rare depictions of the temple interior, including the main altar (see below). The Supreme Ruler of the Somber Heavens (Xuantian shangdi 玄天上帝; also Northern Emperor [Beidi 北帝]) sits in the center. Some contemporary reports given by visitors seem to conflate this central icon with Buddhist figures. It also appears Li may have moved icons around as one visitor claims in 1876, and another in 1880, that Guandi was the central icon, but this may just be a mis-identification (also see next entry for Yan Wo). In the Muybridge photo of the main altar, the Northern Emperor is flanked by Guandi to his left and righteous official Hong Sheng 洪聖 to his right.

The main hall originally enshrined a total of six icons, while other deities were found in adjoining rooms. Notably, Tianhou and Lady Golden Flower were reported enshrined in a room to the left of the main hall while Guanyin was enshrined in a room to the right. One visitor writing in 1890, but describing experiences more than a decade earlier, noted a Chinese liturgy to Guanyin imprinted with her image was available for sale. This was likely similar to the printed Guanyin liturgy dispensed at Ah Ching’s Tin How Temple [#X3], which was still in operation through late 1874. All of the original icons were reportedly made of local clay, a necessity after an intermediary who went to China with $3000 to purchase ritual supplies had disappeared, stealing the money. The temple’s icons were molded, painted, and decorated by Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. The craftsmen may have also made extra copies. One tourist recounting her visit to Eastern Glory Temple in 1877 noted the presence of miniature versions of the icons, claiming they were “possibly for sale.”

During a period when district association temples comprised a single room with a singular central icon, such as reflected at Kong Chow temple [#X2] and Ning Yung temple [#45], the multi-room temple complex of Li Po Tai displaying approximately a dozen icons must have stood out as an exceptional departure from prevailing norms. Only Ah Ching’s privately owned temple at the time held such a wide assortment of figures, but his temple was located further from the heart of Chinese life and tourist attention. Unsurprisingly, after its opening in the early 1870s, Eastern Glory Temple was known as the “boss temple” and “Grand Temple” of Chinatown. Some early reports, likely floated by those unhappy with the growing Chinese religious presence, inflated the grandeur of Li’s temple, claiming it possessed “over a hundred gods,” with “more expected on the next China steamer.”

By 1880, at least three major Chinatown celebrations centered upon Eastern Glory Temple, including the birthdays of the Northern Emperor (3rd day of 3rd lunar month) and the God of Wealth (16th day of 7th lunar month), as well as the summertime Ghost Festival, suggesting this privately-run temple was a major center of local religious life through the 1870s.

At least two detailed engravings were published in the 1870s showing the interior of the main shrine hall with three total altars (see below). The importance of this temple for the religious landscape of Chinatown was only further heightened by the prominence of Li Po Tai, a successful doctor who ran his business near Portsmouth Square and who was considered the wealthiest among all Chinese residents. Yet, the importance of Eastern Glory Temple was often diminished by tourists due to its location in a small, dark alleyway with “rickety stairs.” The claustrophobia of the alley, as well as the clamor of local gambling halls and brothels, caused many tourists to recount their visit to one of Chinatown’s main joss houses with a mixture of fascination and unease.

Sometime around 1882, Li Po Tai seems to have moved the contents of his Eastern Glory Temple to 35 Waverly [#14], next door to Tin How Temple [#12]. Frederick Masters still notes an Eastern Glory at 35 Waverly in 1892, but does not afford it a description, suggesting it had fallen from previous heights as a major Chinatown attraction.

Li passed on March 20, 1893 soon after turning 76. In July of that same year, one of his properties in Chinatown succumb to fire, but this was not his old temple site on St. Louis Alley as suggested by Ho and Bronson; Li never owned this building. Municipal property records from 1886 and 1894 show Li, or his estate, owning buildings at 730 Jackson and 1010/1012 Dupont. This is confirmed by contemporary newspapers covering his estate which variously estimated the value of his properties between $50,000 and $300,000 dollars. The building lost to fire in July 1893 was at 730 Jackson, which Li leased to at least two other groups that operated joss houses from that address in the mid-to-late 1870s and early 1880s.

In 1877, the Yan Wo organization was reported to be the only district association among the major six that had not yet established a company temple. By 1880, however, a San Francisco city tax assessment records the Yan Wo Association as operating a joss house at 5 St. Louis Alley. This claim is corroborated by an 1883 Chinatown guidebook, which also locates a Yan Wo temple on St. Louis Alley. Consequently, it may be the case that an unnamed joss house listed on St. Louis Alley in the 1883 city directory refers to this same district association temple. To date, however, I have found no descriptive accounts of Yan Wo’s shrine hall off this alleyway.

There are still questions that remain outstanding. We now know that Eastern Glory Temple occupied the top floor of 5 St. Louis Alley until approximately 1882. If we take the 1880 city tax assessment at face value, the Yan Wo joss house may have shared the space or occupied a different floor of the same building. Moreover, if the 1876 and 1880 visitors’ reports claiming Guandi was the the central icon in Eastern Glory Temple are correct (they may not be, however, see previous entry) – thus, displacing the icon of the Northern Emperor – this may indicate an critical change of stewardship to Yan Wo as early as 1876, but this remains uncorroborated and speculative. The extant evidence does not allow us to create a clear timeline of events.

By 1892, the address of the Yan Wo Association had moved around the block to 933 Dupont Street, where its shrine was outfitted with an icon of Guandi and “fitted up in elegant style. The 1887 Sanborn map locates a joss house at the rear of the 933 Dupont building, possibly pointing to a move at least five years earlier.

After a series of violent altercations with the Chee Kong Society, the organization from which the Bing Kong Society had originally split, and amid rising tensions in Chinatown more broadly, city police undertook a coordinated raid of Chinese secret society headquarters just prior to Chinese New Year in 1891. The Bing Kong Society was targeted first. When officers entered its headquarters at 817 Washington Street, at the corner of Waverly Place [#20], the interior was ransacked as “joss and idols fell with a crash” [source].

In the autumn of the following year, the society converted a former storefront at 740 Jackson Street into a shrine hall for the veneration of its ancestors. Local newspapers covered the dedication ceremony and included a small sketch illustration of the event (see below). Major ritual occasions from this period—categorized by Ho and Bronson as dajiao 打醮—featured large, wood-framed paper effigies of deities positioned at the temple entrance. These temporary figures were ritually burned at the conclusion of the festivities.

For comparison, I have also included a painting by Theodore Wores depicting similar figures at an unidentified Chinatown temple. The original painting was likely destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire (for additional depictions, seen here & here). Because large festivals attracted many non-Chinese visitors, contemporary observers sometimes mistakenly assumed that these monumental images were permanent fixtures of Chinese temples. By the late 1890s, the Bing Kong Society had established new headquarters and a shrine hall at 34 Waverly Place [#12].

One temple on Jackson Street, often described as located between Dupont and Stockton Streets, remains obscure. It’s important to note that Jackson Street, especially the stretch between Stockton and Dupont streets, was perceived as the heart of old Chinatown, thus a passing tourist reference to a “joss house on Jackson” might have been intended to be more evocative of Chinatown’s religious difference than descriptive of a real location. This notwithstanding, there have been an handful of specific claims about this site as a temple that deserve out attention.

Most importantly, an 1876 guidebook identifies a site on Jackson as a temple dedicated to the goddess Tianhou (Mazu), a claim repeated in 1880 and again in 1882 (the latter account deriving from a visit to Chinatown in the summer of 1878). The 1876 description places the Tianhou temple “on the north side of Jackson, near Stockton,” a location consistent with 730 Jackson Street.

In 1883, however, another guidebook identifies a temple “on Jackson Street near Stockton” as the Eastern Glory Temple. This may reflect confusion with Li Po Tai’s earlier location on St. Louis Alley [#22], which was sometimes also described as being off Jackson Street. It is also possible Li temporarily relocated to Jackson Street sometime around 1883 or 1885. Evidence suggests that Li moved his Eastern Glory Temple from St. Louis Alley to 35 Waverly as early as 1882 [#14], but construction at this Waverly address may have forced his temporary relocation in the mid-1880s.

Complicating matters further, Li owned the building at 730 Jackson, as property records in 1886 and 1894 attest (a record of a fire further confirms he owned the building as early as 1874). The 1886 assessment records that Li owned – or, leased to tenants who operated – two joss houses, five opium dens, and two stores along Duncomb Alley. This description aligns closely with the 1885 Supervisors’ map, which depicts the two-story structure at 730 Jackson as subdivided into ten apartments with two joss houses and five “opium resorts” among them. I have found no evidence that two distinct joss houses operated simultaneously at this address. These spaces may have functioned as separate shrine halls or chapels for the same joss house, similar to the arrangement documented at the Eastern Glory Temple on St. Louis Alley.

At least two different groups used the Jackson Street site as a shrine hall at separate times. The 1881 city directory lists a “Sum Yup” joss house at 730 Jackson Street, referring to the Sam Yup Association later loosely affiliated with the Tin How Temple on Waverly [#12]. If city records are accurate, it is reasonable to infer that the Sam Yup Association leased this space from Li Po Tai. In 1882, the city directory simply lists the address as an unnamed joss house.

Several years earlier, in 1877, a different group known as the Hip Yee Society was also reported as maintaining a temple at 730 Jackson. Notably, in the following year, the Hip Yee Society is listed at 33 Waverly, the site of the famed Tin How Temple and a building the society ultimately (re)acquired in 1890. It could be the case that the 1876 city guidebook citing a Jackson Street Tianhou temple was referring to the same Hip Yee Society temple. The precise relationship between the Tianhou temples on Jackson and Waverly remains unclear, though the Hip Yee Society may have been a key link between the two.

There was at least one moment when the Jackson Street temple appears to have commanded citywide attention. In a work published in 1880, Chinatown’s birthday celebrations for Tianhou (the twenty-third day of the third lunar month) are described as taking place at the Jackson Street temple, suggesting that it was regarded at the time as a particularly important shrine to the goddess. Earlier celebrations in 1873 and 1874 had been held at Ah Ching’s Tianhou temple on Mason [#X3]. It is uncler if the Jackson temple in 1880 was managed by Hip Yee, Sam Yap, or another organization or individual. It does appear, however, the subsequent rise in prominence of the Waverly temple through the 1880s may be closely linked to the disappearance of the Tianhou temples on Mason and Jackson.

In 1885, Li Po Tai’s Eastern Glory Temple is described at occupying 730 Jackson (a variant account claims it was the How Wong Temple of the Yeong Wo Association [see #35]). If accurate, this would corroborate the hypothesis of Li’s temporary relocation during the mid-1880s. It may also explain why the 1885 Supervisors’ map marks a joss house at this location, while the 1887 Sanborn map does not. John Hittel’s San Francisco guidebook map, published in 1888, also shows a joss house at approximately 730 Jackson, but this map seems to uncritically copy most of the joss house locations identified by the 1885 Supervisors’ map. Frederick Masters does not mention a Tianhou temple, or any other religious site, on Jackson in his comprehensive survey of Chinatown temples in 1892.

In July 1893, only months after Li Po Tai’s death, a fire broke out at 730 Jackson Street (misreported in newspapers as 830 Jackson), displacing a tinsmith, a cigar maker, and numerous tenants living in the rear of the long structure (see below). One newspaper account remarked that “the building was one time a joss-house of a powerful society,” a vague characterization that obscures the site’s complex – and rather significant – religious history.

The Yeong Wo Association was formed in 1852 by a small group of early Chinese immigrants, among whom Norman Assing (b. 1808, born Yuan Sheng 袁生) emerged as the most prominent. An English-speaking naturalized citizen, Assing first arrived in the United States in 1820 and, after returning to China, came to California in July 1849, where he opened a successful restaurant. In 1851, Assing played a central role in organizing San Francisco’s first Chinese New Year celebration, hosting a large feast at his home and inviting members of the city’s police force. In subsequent years, this event developed into one of the most visible expressions of Chinese identity and communal celebration in the city.

The Yeong Wo Association is known to have maintained a temple on the southwestern slope of Telegraph Hill by at least late 1852. We can now connect this site to an earlier unnamed “idol temple” noted in newspapers across the US in 1851 as being erected at an undocumented location in San Francisco [#X1]. The temple was built in the summer of 1851, reputedly based on a “modified Chinese plan” with imported Chinese spruce timber. The formal dedication of the shrine hall in 1852 was captured with unusual detail by a local newspaper reporter. As analyzed by Ho and Bronson, the dedication of the shrine hall included Chinese opera performances as part of the festivities. The reporter mistakenly interpreted these theatrical performances as ritual actions conducted by Chinese priests. The temple’s icon was described only as resembling “a little doll,” with no further detail provided.

By 1868, the Yeong Wo organization headquarters was still in the “old house” on Telegraph Hill, but was developing property on Sacramento Street – addresses at 727 and 730 Sacramento Street appear in city directories of the 1870s and early 1880s. At an unknown time, religious activities seem to have shifted to a temporary location on Brooklyn Place [#2]. By September 1879, newspapers reported on Yeong Wo’s birthday festivities on Brooklyn Place honoring Houwang 侯王, a semi-historical figure who had become the association’s “patron deity.” Matters are complicated by the presence of a Houwang Temple on Brooklyn Place dating back to at least 1866, which appears to have been loosely affiliated with the Yeong Wo Association. Ho and Bronson speculate this earlier temple belonged to a benevolent society connected to Yeong Wo. Regardless, Houwang became so closely associated with this area of Chinatown that by the summer of 1877 residents referred to Brooklyn Place as “How Wong Temple Street.”

The Yeong Wo Association’s devotion to Houwang stems from the fact that all of its members hailed from Xiangshan 香山 district (modern Zhongshan), a region that contained an important Houwang temple. The physical icon of Houwang in San Francisco was reputed to have an especially distinctive provenance. According to one tradition retold by the San Francisco Examiner, it was discovered in Xiangshan “centuries ago” after a devastating flood receded, revealing the small figure atop a mountain; the deity thereafter ensured peace and stability in the region. When the icon was brought to California, it was said to have first resided in apartments on Mason Street near Post Street. Notably, this intersection is precisely where Ah Ching would establish his Tin How Temple [#X3], possibly as early as 1856, suggesting this area may have served as an important hub of Chinese religious activity shortly after large-scale immigration began.

The placement and potential movement of Yeong Wo / How Wong Temples until the late 1880s remains difficult to reconstruct. An 1880 city tax assessment claims that Yeong Wo maintained a company house and joss house at 730 Sacramento Street, but this most likely refers to a small altar, not a full shrine hall. In 1883, for example, the festive parade for Houwang’s birthday still originated at Brooklyn Place. Parade members traversed down Sacramento, up Commercial, and along Dupont until arriving at the Chinese theater on Jackson Street where performances were held for the occasion. There is also no mention of returning to Sacramento street at the end of the celebration. Of equal note, however, one newspaper account asserts the 1883 parade marked Yeong Wo’s first celebration of Houwang’s birthday, claiming that earlier festivities had been held at a temple on Cum Cook Alley, an area known as Chinatown’s redlight district. These conflicting accounts cannot be fully reconciled at present.

Moreover, it has been suggested, by myself and others, that in 1885 the Yeong Wo Association or Houwang Temple might have occupied 730 Jackson [#28] during Houwang’s birthday festivities that year. The singular evidence for this, however, appears to derive from an error in the San Francisco Chronicle. By contrast, the San Francisco Examiner reports the Yeong Wo parade of that year passed by 730 Jackson which was occupied by Eastern Glory Temple, an occupant that makes more sense given the time frame of the mid-1880s [see #14].

The Yeong Wo Association finally relocated to Sacramento Street in September 1887, nearly twenty years after such a move was first reported. This transition was marked by an especially elaborate birthday parade for Houwang, who was ceremonially transported to his newly sanctified abode. A rudimentary newspaper sketch depicts the diminutive icon, echoing the early observer who likened it to a child’s doll (see below). The procession featured a massive serpentine dragon constructed from brown packing paper covered in silk, measuring 170 feet in length – more than three times longer than the fifty-foot dragon used the previous year (see sketch of mask below). The dragon alone reportedly cost $2,000, while the entire celebration was said to have cost $50,000. Houwang’s annual birthday festivities, characterized by raucous parades and spectacle, continued to attract public attention and press coverage through 1906.

Amédée Joulin (1862–1917), a French-American painter born in San Francisco, is reputed to have painted the interior of the Yeong Wo temple in 1890. Two newspaper illustrations also depict the temple elaborately decorated for festival occasions (see all below). After the 1906 earthquake the Yeong Wo shrine hall was not replaced.

As early as 1853 district associations in Chinatown banded together to help collectively aid in the concerns of the Chinese community, especially in caring for the Chinese sick and poor and repatriating bones of the deceased back to China. In time, according to Him Mark Lai, “a gongsuo (“public hall”) consisting of huiguan [district associaiton] officers and committeemen was established around 1862. This, however, appeared to be a loosely organized federation of the huiguan, which by consensus made decisions on matters affecting the general interest of the Chinese on the Pacific Coast.” The services in which this loose fraternity provided were wide ranging, including, “settling disputes between the people of different companies, consulting on the best means to contest or seek relief from anti-Chinese laws, devising means to bar the import of Chinese prostitutes, and entertaining public figures.”

Because there were six major district associations in operation at the time – Ning Yung, Hop Wo, Kong Chow, Yeoung Wo, Sam Yup, and Yan Wo – this organization became known as the Chinese Six Companies, a name that held in later years despite the addition of more district assoications. By 1882, the loose organization was formalized and its powers more clearly defined, in part, to combat actions engendered by growing anti-Chinese sentiment. The new organization was formally known in English as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) and had divisions in other cities across North America.

The San Francisco offices were initially at 732 Commercial Street through the late 1860s [#36], but the organization settled at 728 Commercial in the mid-1870s. According to Ho and Bronson, the San Francisco CCBA never managed a public temple, but only kept a “small non-public shrine hall in its meeting room.” The 1887 Sanborn map shows a unnamed Chinese Association occupying a three-story brick building at 728 Commercial that directly abuts the Hop Wo Joss House [#38].

After seperating from the Sze Yup Association in 1862, the Hop Wo Association headquarters occupied 736 Commercial Street through the late 1860s [#36]. Hop Wo members opened their first headquarters with dedicated shrine hall in 1874 after purchasing a three-story brick building directly across from the southwest corner of Portsmouth Square the previous year for $24,000. The building spanned a lot that reached back to Commercial Street and soon after the building was purchsed the Chinese Benevolent Association moved to the other entrance fronting 728 Commercial [#37].

The shrine hall, dedicated to Guandi, was on the top floor and outfitted with a reported $30,000 worth of icons, furnishings, and ritual equipment shipped from China. Soon after opening, a touring New York clergyman marveled at the temple’s opulence, claiming he was “entranced in a blaze of glory!” A hospital for company members was located in the basement which also apparently offered hospice care.

Through the early 1880s tourist guide books continued to recommend seeing the Hop Wo shrine hall, but by 1892 the building had lost its former luster, with Frederic Masters proclaiming it a “dingy-looking place.”

Isaiah West Taber took two rare photographs of the shrine hall in the mid-1880s (see one below). These were sold by Taber’s studio by 1889. In addition, one anonymous photo from around 1900 shows the building exterior (below; see also Arnold Genthe photo here). The shrine hall, as with many district association buildings, was not replaced after the 1906 earthquake.

Both the 1885 Surveyors’ Map and the 1887 Sanborn Map mark 3 Brenham Place as a joss house, right next door to the Chinese Mission under the supervision of Rev. William Pond. A joss house at 3 Brenham is first listed in the 1883 city directory. As Ho and Bronson have shown, the multi-story wood building was occupied by the wealthy Wong Kong Ha 黃江夏 clan. Records from 1886 and 1894 record the property was owned by the L. & J. Joseph brothers, thus the Wong family most likely leased the space for their shrine hall. The Wong clan building faced Portsmouth Square, then simply known as the Plaza, the heart of old San Francisco.

One photo dated circa 1880 shows 3 Brenham Place with a shrine hall on the top floor (see below). (An older stereoview of Portsmouth Square taken by Isaiah West Taber shows 3 Brenham Place before the second floor was turned into a shrine hall, see here; also here). This dating is corroborated by a small hand-painted signboard indicating the Hop Yick & Co. at 1 Brenham Place, a restaurant also listed in city directories from the early 1880s. The Hop Yick restaurant was at the southern end of a building known as the Porthsmouth House that formed the corner of the block and ran westwards along Clay. While the photo shows a two-story building at 3 Brenham, the 1887 Sanborn map indicates a three story brick building with basement level, suggesting the construction of a new building sometime in the interim.

The identification of a joss house on Brenham Place is complicated by the record of a Shin Shee Nue [sic] joss house at 2 Brenham Place, first seen in the city directory of 1881. The existence of a “Sin See Mu Society” on Brenham is also reported in the summer of 1882 when a festival and parade was held for its “wooden” icon, described as a “violent-looking old gentleman” with his “right hand stretched far above his head.” This icon was not the one ensrined in the temple, but was burned at the end of the celebrations, as was common practice. In the summer of 1884 a newspaper recounts the celebrations of the “Shim Shee Mue” on Brenham and during the following summer of 1885 we again find a report covering the birthday celebrations of a “Wong Tung Shim Shee Mue.”

The use of the name “Wong” in the 1885 report suggests the Wong clan had a formal relationship with Shim Shee Temple (shim shee mue 禪師廟), transcribed several different ways above, which presumably occupied the neighboring Porthsmouth House. Unfortunately, the relationship between Shim Shee Temple and the Wong family remains poorly understood, but Ho and Bronson have shown a Wong family member was the head of a committee raising funds for the Shim Shee organization in 1903.

By the summer of 1887, the “Shinn See Mue” had moved from Portsmouth Square, holding their celebrations “in the josshouse on Stockton” near Washington Street. Notably, the 1887 Sanborn Map marks the Porthsmouth House, presumably where the Shim Shee Temple resided, as “built 1850,” and “to be removed.” This planned demolition may have caused the society to relocate elsewhere. In 1888, the “Shin Si Gear Society” enshrined a new ivory icon imported directly from Beijing, presumably at their new location on Stockton. The Chinese business directory of San Francisco in 1895 lists the Shim Shee Temple at 1111 Stockton, most likely the address they moved to in 1887. The identity of the central icon, Shim Shee, or Chan Master, remains unknown, but Ho and Bronson speculate he might be connected to a curious spirit table inscribed with “Great Virtue Chan Master” (dade chanshi 大德禪師) currently held in Kong Chow temple.

To complicate matters further, by 1892, the Wong family is described as occupying 2 Brenham Place, a address repeated in 1893 when they held a birthday celebration for their patron goddess, Guanyin. The history of this “move” is not straightforward. According to Ho and Bronson, this represented a new four-story building built in “early 1890” with a top-floor shrine hall dedicated to Water Moon Guanyin. If a newspaper sketch from 1893 is accurate (see below), this appears to be a new construction over the old footprint of 3 Brenham, meaning the building was renumbered to 2 Brenham. The street renumbering may have occurred after the Porthsmouth House on Clay was demolished in the latter half of the 1880s and rebuilt as a four-story brick building. (This would place the Wong clan building at 7–9 Brenham Place on the 1905 Sanborn map [here].)

A September 1894 article in the San Francisco Call, however, places a “new” Wong family temple on the “corner” of Brenham and Clay, “next door to the family’s old house of prayer,” suggesting the Wong’s shrine hall had relocated next door. (See 5 Brenham on the 1905 Sanborn map. Both new buildings are visible in a photo dated to 1905, see here.) Ho and Bronson assume the “new” buildings of 1890 and 1894 were the same, but the shrine hall was re-furnished and the icon re-installed in 1894. Police raids in 1897 around Chinatown report the Suey Ying Society as having meeting rooms and a joss house at 1 Brenham, thus unless the Wong family shrine occupied a different floor of the building, the latter likely remianed at their old location.

Less than a decade later, in July 1902, the Wong family moved from Portsmouth Square to a new three-story brick building on the west side of Waverly Place close to Washington Street [#17]. The building is listed as 137 Waverly on the 1905 Sanborn map and is identified as having “society rooms.” Two year earlier, the Wong family incorporated as the Wong Benevolent Association and purchased what appears to have been a vacant lot on Waverly from Wong Yow and Lim Shee for the lowly sum of $500 in 1901.

After the Wong family relocation, the 1905 Sanborn map indicates a joss house had been reestablished at the corner of Brenham Place. Notably, the 1905 city telephone directory indicates the City God Temple, previously located on Waverly [#7] and then 1018 Stockton [#23], occupied 5 Brenham (location of old Portsmouth House). A turn of the century photograph shows the corner building at 5 Brenham with lanterns and vertical sign boards hanging on the second balcony, the material signatures of an operating temple (see below). The old Wong clan building at 7–9 Brenham retains the top floor balcony space, but without lanterns and sign boards, suggesting a lack of tenants managing a shrine hall.

The first Ning Yung temple occupied the upper floor of an imposing two-story brick building on Broadway, just below Montgomery Avenue. Although the organization was founded in 1853 following its secession from the Sze Yap Association, Ning Yung members did not establish a dedicated temple until 1864. The shrine hall was consecrated amid considerable local media attention and remained in use until 1891, when the association relocated to Waverly Place [#6].

The temple’s central icon was a life-size image of Guandi, described by an early-career Mark Twain as “excessively fat,” with a “rotund face… painted excessively red” [source]. The original shrine hall was large with eighteen-foot ceilings and lavisly decorated with ornate carvings, inscribed plaques, and ritual implements.

This temple was an early tourist favorite on the northern fringes of Chinatown, despite being located in the vice-ridden area then called Barbary Coast. After the privately owned Eastern Glory Temple opened in 1871 [#22], however, guidebooks increasingly redirected visitors to that site. The move of the Ning Yung Association to Waverly in the early 1890s relocated its temple into the heart of Chinatown’s religious district.

The recent discovery of a reference to an early Yeong Wo Association hospital on Varennes Street, off Union Street, on the southwestern slope of Telegraph Hill not only resolves the long-standing question of the location of the first Yeong Wo joss house in San Francisco, but also helps identify what may be the earliest documented Chinese American temple in the United States, first reported in the fall of 1851.

Two documents are central to this identification: a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Chinatown Declared a Nuisance! published in 1880, and a San Francisco Call Bulletin article from 1881 that appears to have been written as a reporter’s on-site follow-up to the concerns raised in the pamphlet.

The pamphlet was distributed by the Workingmen’s Committee of California, a labor organization and political party notorious for promoting racist and exclusionary anti-Chinese policies. Released on March 10, 1880, it presents an aggressively hostile portrayal of Chinese life in San Francisco, particularly focusing on alleged unsanitary conditions. The document calls for the condemnation of Chinatown as a “nuisance” and demands “its abatement without delay.”

Of particular relevance here is the Committee’s survey of Chinese hospitals, which notes the existence of a building “on Varennes street, off Union, with Joss-house attached, where the sick are placed to die.” The remainder of the passage uses inflammatory language to depict the Chinese as callous to suffering and death. This obscures several critical realities as municipal hospitals in San Francisco routinely denied admission to Chinese patients, leaving Chinese community organizations to provide care for their own sick and dying. Moreover, as Guenter Risse has demonstrated, early Chinese immigrants held cultural understandings of death and dying that diverged from Euro-American norms, particularly regarding the importance of proper burial rites and the eventual repatriation of bones to China for final interment near family. Consequently, dying in proximity to clan or district association members who could ensure these obligations were fulfilled was considered essential, regardless of how rudimentary or uncomfortable such facilities appeared to outside observers.

The recent discovery of an early Yeong Wo Association hospital on Varennes Street, off Union Street, on the southwestern slope of Telegraph Hill not only resolves the question of the location of the first Yeong Wo joss house in San Francisco, but also helps identify the earliest documented Chinese American “idol temple” in the United States, first reported in the fall of 1851.

Two documents are central to this identification: a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Chinatown Declared a Nuisance! published in 1880 [source], and a San Francisco Call article from 1881 that appears to have been written as a reporter’s on-site follow-up to the concerns raised in the pamphlet and subsequent political ramifications.

The pamphlet was distributed by the Workingmen’s Committee of California, a labor organization and political party notorious for promoting racist and exclusionary anti-Chinese policies. Released on March 10, 1880, it presents an aggressively hostile portrayal of Chinese life in San Francisco, particularly focusing on alleged unsanitary conditions. The document calls for the condemnation of Chinatown as a “nuisance” and demands “its abatement without delay.”

The identification of a hospital on Varennes Street with an attached joss house is especially significant, as it points directly to the location of the first Yeong Wo temple, which was dedicated thirty years earlier, in 1852, at an otherwise undocumented site on Telegraph Hill. Varennes Street is a short mid-block lane connecting Union and Filbert Streets. As both Union and Filbert extend eastward, they ascend Telegraph Hill, situating Varennes on the hill’s southwestern-facing slope (see map above). This topography corresponds with contemporary descriptions by Augustus Loomis and William Speers, who located the Yeong Wo temple on the “southwestern slope” and “southern side” of Telegraph Hill, respectively. The evidence thus allows for a more precise placement of the early Yeong Wo temple, namely on Varennes Street.

This conclusion is reinforced by the San Francisco Call reporter’s visit to the “Varennes Street Hospital” in March 1881. The reporter noted that the lintel boards identifying the building were still visible and bore the name “Yeong Wo Company.” It is important to emphasize that early district association headquarters commonly served multiple functions: they housed meeting rooms and shrine halls while also operating as hospitals or hospices. The second-oldest district association building in San Francisco, erected by the Sze Yap organization in 1853, was deliberately designated an “asylum.” As Ho and Bronson observe, such early Chinese temple-asylums functioned broadly as “a hospital, hospice, or refuge of almost any kind.”

By the time of the reporter’s visit, Yeong Wo leadership appears to have already relocated its meeting rooms and shrine hall elsewhere, leaving the older company house, now outside the formal boundaries of Chinatown, to serve as a place for the sick to recuperate in relative seclusion or to pass away on company land, where their bodies could be retrieved and properly cared for. As the Call article notes, all district associations maintained buildings that functioned as hospitals or hospices, and this site appears to have been the facility used by the Yeong Wo Association.

The timing of Yeong Wo’s relocation remains uncertain, though the association still occupied the “old house” on Telegraph Hill in 1868. Its meeting rooms may have moved to Sacramento Street by the early 1870s, while the main shrine hall appears to have relocated to Brooklyn Place, where it is cited in newspaper accounts by the late 1870s or early 1880s [#35].

The Call reporter also provides crucial evidence linking this site to an earlier 1851 report of an unnamed Chinese “idol temple” in San Francisco. The article notes the building was constructed in the “Summer of 1851,” information seemingly obtained from Chinese patients staying at the Yeong Wo location. The reporter describes the building’s construction as follows:

“The land was purchased and timber of Chinese spruce sent for. A building was erected on a modified Chinese plan, ornate and elegantly appointed. It was two stories in height with overjutting roof, supported by four slender columns with cross beams and ornamentally bracketed. Double doors gave entrance, but no window was upon the first floor in front. Three windows gave light to the upper story.”

This description closely conforms to known configurations of Chinese American temples of the period, in which the primary shrine was often located on the upper floor, accompanied by windows or a balcony. The article further describes a second structure on the property – “a long, low, one-story affair” – in which one room contained “the remains of what was once a handsome altar.” The reporter concludes pointedly, “this was the Joss House of 1851, gone to rack and ruin.”

Regardless of how these two buildings on Telegraph Hill were used or repurposed over time, the article provides firm evidence for the presence of a joss house on Varennes Street, on the southwestern slope of Telegraph Hill, and connects it directly to both the Yeong Wo Association and a construction date of 1851. This not only confirms the specualtion of Ho and Bronson that the unnamed Chinese “idol temple” was identical to the Yeong Wo temple dedicated in 1852, but also specifically locates this temple on Varennes Street.

I have been unable to determine the precise lot on Varennes Street where the Yeong Wo temple stood. Given the increasingly hostile political climate of the early 1880s, culminating in the passage of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, it is unlikely that buildings attracting such intense public condemnation would have survived until the surveying of Telegraph Hill for the 1886 Sanborn maps. Nevertheless, a two-story wooden structure with a single-story building to its rear appears on the west side of the street as 7 Varennes, offering a possible, if tentative, correspondence with the description in the Call article.

I am aware of no illustrations or photogrpahs of this early Chinese temple. When English photogrpaher George R. Fardon (1806–1886) took a panorama of San Francisco in 1855, taken atop a building on the corner of Sacremento and Stockton Streets in Chinatown, he may have inadvertently captured the temple in the cluster of buildings at the base of Telegraph Hill (see below).

The Pine Street temple was first constructed by the Sze Yup Association in 1853, but the central icon of Guandi did not arrive from China until 1856. A multi-day celebration was held to consecrate the shrine hall on the second floor. It is commonly claimed the Sze Yup (alternatively, “Sze Yap”) temple was the first Buddhist temple in the United States, but this is without warrant. The sole icon enshrined was Guandi, as was common in district association temples, and no images of the Buddha or any other Buddhist figure were installed. Guandi was venerated primarily as a patron deity of loyalty, integrity, and fraternity – values that resonated strongly with district association members living far from their homeland. Moreover, contemporary accounts note that the 1856 consecration employed meat and alcohol offerings, practices common in Chinese popular religion, but not sanctioned within normative Chinese Buddhist ritual frameworks.

If any members of the Sze Yup Association sought a more appropriate religious setting with Buddhist icons (bracketing the thorny issue of Chinese religious affiliation during the late Qing), they would likely have turned to privately owned temples in San Francisco. Such temples typically enshrined a broader pantheon of deities, including the widely revered Buddhist figure Guanyin. Indeed, it may have been precisely the absence of certain deities in district association temples that encouraged the development of independent shrines, such as Ah Ching’s Tin How Temple [#X3], opening as early as 1856, and Li Po Tai’s Eastern Glory Temple [#22], opening in 1871 – both of which enshrined Guanyin in special rooms. Whatever the complexities surrounding the religious self-identification of early Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, the material practices of the Sze Yup Association shrine hall do not support its characterization as Buddhist.

In addition to these considerations, at least two newspaper reports identify a joss house in San Francisco prior to the completion of the Sze Yup building in 1853. One refers to a previously unknown joss house mentioned in articles in the fall of 1851, while the other concerns a temple built by the Yeong Wo Association on the southwestern slope of Telegraph Hill in the fall of 1852 [see #35]. We now know these were most likely the same temple located on Varennes Street which was built in 1851 and dedicated in 1852 [#X1]. Documentary evidence is clear that the Sze Yup Association shrine hall was not the first American Chinese temple, Buddhist or otherwise.

After the dissolution of the Sze Yup Association, as Him Mark Lai has shown, all of its property was legally deeded to the Kong Chow Association, one of the splinter groups of the Sze Yup in 1866. Despite the construction of new temples by other district associations over the years, the Kong Chow temple remained a special place of reverence for those devoted to Guandi. In both 1873 and 1880, and undoubtedly most other years as well, Guandi’s birthday celebrations (13th day of 5th lunar month) were held on Kong Chow temple grounds, a point underscored by Masters in 1892 who claimed the temple was viewed as particularly “efficacious.”

Presbyterian minister Augustus Loomis, who served as a missionary in Chinatown from 1859 until his death in 1891, wrote about San Francisco’s Chinese temples in 1870 and provided a detailed description of the Kong Chow temple interior. An engraving accompanied his account, constituting only the second published depiction of a Chinese American shrine hall, following that of the Ning Yung temple [#45] (see below). In the engraving, Guandi occupies the central position on the main altar, surrounded by a wide array of ritual implements. In addition, a rare anonymous photograph dating to the early 1880s captures the brick edifice that served as the entrance to the Kong Chow sanctuary, located mid-block in the 500 block of Pine Street (see below).

The Kong Chow Association remained on Pine through 1906 and, unlike its sister organizations, was one of the few to rebuild its shrine hall after the San Francisco earthquake.

As reported in 1868, the merchant Ah Ching opened what might have been the first privately owned temple in San Francisco, located just west of Union Square on Mason Street near Post Street. The main icon was Tianhou, located on the first floor, but additional icons were aslo enshrined, including the standard fixtures of the God of Medicine (Huatuo), God of Wealth (Cai shen), and Guandi. This report is also the first account of Golden Flower (Jinhua), a figure that would be celebrated across Chinatown, but only come to have her own temple by the late 1880s [#2].

On the second floor of Ah Ching’s temple a singular icon of Guanyin was enshrined, making this the earliest attested altar dedicated to this vaunted Buddhist figure on American soil. At least by 1868, a short liturgy to Guanyin, printed on yellow paper and bearing her image holding a willow branch and vase, was distributed to devout temple visitors.

It is unknown when An Ching’s temple opened, but Ho and Bronson speculate it could have been as early as 1856. In 1873 and 1874, Chinatown’s three-day birthday celebrations for Tianhou are noted as taking place at this temple, suggesting it was an important gathering place for Chinese immigrants during this celebration. At least one newspaper article claims this temple was, “the resort of itinerant wash-house men and household servants,” contrasting it to the more upscale district association temples, such as the Sze Yup temple on Pine [#X2].

By the time of the report in 1868, Ah Ching had already died and the temple was in the hands of a former temple servant. The building Ah Ching found did not last much longer. The temple succumbed to fire in December 1874 and appears to have not been rebuilt. Brief reports on the fire inform us the temple looked towards Mason and was next to a building owned by Emory & Sons. The 1894 city property directory shows the Emory Brothers still owning property on the northwest corner of Mason and Post, suggesting Ah Ching’s temple was just north of Post on Mason, on the west side of the street (approximately 503/505 on the 1905 Sanborn map).