Building On Traditions

THE WING LUKE Asian Museum has raised more than two-thirds of the $23 million it needs to restore and arrange the 60,000 feet within these brick walls into a new home for what may be the only pan-Asian Pacific-American museum in the U.S.

The opportunity to move less than two blocks from its home (in a converted car-repair garage) on Seventh Avenue South near Jackson Street into the East Kong Yick Building on King Street will allow the museum to expand its role in the community. But it required the cooperation of an earthquake and the 95-year-old building's many shareholders — some of whom had lived or worked in the building or even descended from those who had built it.

As the story goes, in 1910 — soon after the extensive Jackson Street regrade had lowered this intersection at Eighth and King — 170 Chinese-American shareholders joined to finance the building of the East Kong Yick and its neighbor across Canton Alley (here far right), the West Kong Yick Building. Many of them also joined hands in the construction.

In 2001, the Nisqually earthquake shook both the building and the hotel's venerable routines. The Kong Yick had been home to not only single working men — Chinese, Japanese and Filipino — but also families and the extended family associations that sustained a vulnerable community of minorities. This social net was also a social center for the many traditional games and shows that the immigrants had brought with them. After the quake, the building's shareholders turned to the museum for help.

The museum plans to move to East Kong Yick in 2007. Part of its designs include preservation of the building's Wa Young Company storefront (third from the alley, near the center) and the hotel manager's office.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.