Chinatown

A few blocks on Centre Street, bought and built by the people who live in them.

This is Calgary's third Chinatown, and the third one held because the community bought the ground. In 1910, after a railway announcement pushed Chinese tenants out of the second location, eight businessmen bought a corner lot at Centre Street and 2nd Avenue SE and built the Canton Block, the first building constructed and owned by members of Calgary's Chinese community. The Chinese Masonic Hall followed in 1912 and the Ho Lem Block in 1911. Above the ground floors, those societies are still there. Around them the stock runs almost entirely apartment, 454 parcels from the 1970s and 1,242 from the 2000s and 2010s, with the Bow River one block north.

We wrote the full story on The Desk. Living in Chinatown.