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Los Angeles's first Chinatown stood near Alameda and Macy Streets from the 1880s until the city condemned the land in the 1930s to build Union Station. The neighborhood came down gradually. A remnant lasted into the early 1950s between the old Plaza and the new station, its shops lining Ferguson Alley, until Christine Sterling had the block razed too. Only the Garnier Building survived. It now holds the .
The Chinatown that replaced it opened in 1938. Peter Soo Hoo, an engineer at the city's water department, arranged the land deal through a Santa Fe Railroad agent to get around alien land laws that barred Chinese immigrants from buying property outright. , its courtyard, was laid out with help from Hollywood set designers. The director Cecil B. DeMille donated a Chinese movie prop to decorate it. Its shophouses are low and roofed like pagodas, with paper lanterns strung between them. Its alleys still carry names from the same plan, Gin Ling Way and Mei Ling Way.
Two camphor wood gates from the same period stand at the plaza's edges, a West Gate on Hill Street and an East Gate on Broadway. A newer arch also spans Broadway, near Cesar Chavez Avenue. It is called the , dedicated in 2001.
runs off the plaza's northeast corner, its storefronts empty for years before art galleries began moving in during the late 1990s.
Alameda Street marks the neighborhood's other edge, and has served French dip sandwiches there since 1951.
