In 1886, a budding Chinatown, with about ninety Chinese residents, emerged on Carrall Street and Dupont Street (named East Pender Street after 1904). By the 1890s, Vancouver’s Chinatown had more than one thousand Chinese residents, clustered on Dupont Street between Carrall and Columbia streets. Due to crowding in Chinatown it was common for many workers to sleep together in a single room. There were also many social problems such as prostitution, opium-smoking and gambling. The residents of Chinatown were provided access to Christianity when the Chinese Methodist Church was established on Dupont Street in 1889.
In 1904 and 1905, Canton and Shanghai alleys were created on the west side of Carrall Street with the construction of new tenement buildings, many grocery shops, tailors, restaurants, and other businesses. Meanwhile, Chinese businesses had also moved eastward on Dupont Street from Carrall Street to Westminster Avenue (named Main Street after 1910).
On 7 September 1907, members of the Asiatic Exclusion League marched to Chinatown where they beat up dozens of Chinese, wrecked stores and smashed windows. Order was not restored for several days. Despite these attacks, Chinatown continued to grow. By the end of the first decade of the 1900s, Chinatown covered about four city blocks bounded by Canton Alley to the west, Hastings Street to the north, Keefer Street to the south, and Westminster Avenue to the east.
After the turn of the twentieth century, Vancouver’s Chinatown outstripped Victoria’s in both population and importance. Having a deeper harbour and being the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver took over trade that had formerly passed through Victoria, gradually replacing Victoria as the premier port on Canada’s Pacific coast. The 1911 national census listed 3,559 Chinese in Vancouver and 3,458 in Victoria; this made Vancouver home to the largest Chinese settlement in Canada. Vancouver’s Chinatown became the largest Chinatown in Canada, followed by Victoria’s.
In 1896, six prominent merchants, namely Yip Sang, Shum Moon, Wong Soon King, Lee Kee, Chow Tong and Leong Suey, founded the Chinese Benevolent Association, and erected a building in 1910 to serve as its office as well as a Chinese Hospital. The association functioned as spokesman for the Chinese community in Vancouver.
During the 1910s and 1920s, many Chinese association buildings were built according to western architectural conventions but they did include some unique Chinatown features such as the “cheater floor,” recessed balcony, and long steep staircases to upper floors. There were also narrow alleyways running from Dupont Street to the back alley at the rear of the buildings.
