Ping Yuen
Ping Yuen and North Ping Yuen (sometimes collectively called The Pings) form a four-building public housing complex in the north end of Chinatown, San Francisco along Pacific Avenue. In total, there are 434 apartments. The three Pings on the south side of Pacific (West, Central, and East Ping Yuen) were dedicated in 1951, and the North Ping Yuen building followed a decade later in 1961. Some of the largest murals in Chinatown are painted on Ping Yuen, which are prominent landmark buildings taller than the typical two- or three-story Chinatown buildings that date back to the early 1900s. The formal effort to build Ping Yuen started in 1939 after Chinatown was called "the worst [slum] in the world"; it was the first public housing project completed in the neighborhood, and unlike the typical single room occupancy housing of Chinatown, featured private bathrooms and kitchens for each apartment when the first building opened in 1951. Like most buildings in Chinatown, it was designed by western architects with Chinese thematic elements. Although it was touted as potentially drawing more tourists to the area, it soon became known as a dangerous place, with the July 4 shooting over fireworks sales that occurred at Ping Yuen leading to the Golden Dragon massacre of 1977. The murder of Julia Wong in 1978 inspired residents to go on a rent strike, led by future mayor Ed Lee, for improvements to building maintenance and security. Ownership of Ping Yuen passed from the city to the Chinatown Community Development Center in 2016, which is continuing to work with residents' associations to improve conditions. History In 1893, the San Francisco Call confidently bragged that according to an agent from the United States Department of Labor, there were no slums in the city. Although Chinatown was mentioned as a notable exception, the "unsavory, unsightly quarter" was thought to be "rapidly growing smaller and may finally reach the vanishing point" as immigration had been throttled by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. By 1896, banks had stopped lending money to Chinatown residents, and the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904 dealt another blow to the population. The San Jose Herald described Chinatown as "a foul, spreading ulcer in the center of San Francisco" and encouraged its complete removal, even though a medical investigator hired by the Call concluded "there is not the remotest danger of contagion in San Francisco if the proper radical measures recommended are carried out. ... You must not make an excuse to clean the spot because there is plague here, but you must act solely on the ground that the district is in a filthy condition". By 1904, parts of Chinatown were being demolished to improve sanitation. However, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed immigration records, resulting in the immigration of paper sons and daughters: many Chinese American residents of San Francisco claimed to have been born in the city to gain citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment; their offspring would then be citizens as well. Numerous