The former On Leong Merchants Association Building has been a symbol of Chinatown for nearly a century, carrying with it a history as colorful as its architecture.
And now the 97-year-old Chicago building’s design and backstory might earn it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
The program committee of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is set to vote May 16 on whether to support a national register listing for the On Leong building, now called the Pui Tak Center.
A “yes” vote could put the recommendation on a path to be approved by the National Park Service around Labor Day.
The building would be Chinatown’s first national register listing, though the On Leong was made a protected city of Chicago landmark in 1993.
Pui Tak Center executive director David Wu said the Chinese Christian Union Church — which has owned the building at 2216 S. Wentworth Ave. since 1993 — applied for national register status.
“It’s part of preserving [the building] for the next hundred years,” Wu said.
Center of life in Chinatown
Built in 1928, the On Leong was one of the first buildings constructed in the then-new Chinatown. The On Leong merchants resettled in the area of 22nd Street and Wentworth Avenue after Chinese businesses were essentially gentrified out of the South Loop starting in the 1920s.
While the old South Loop Chinatown buildings had no overtly Chinese-inspired stylings, structures in the new Chinatown would, starting with the On Leong headquarters.
Inspired by the Chinese Eclecticism style that came into vogue in San Francisco when that city’s Chinatown rebuilt itself after the 1906 earthquake, the On Leong was designed with towers shaped like pagodas and dazzling patterned and textured brickwork.
And the building’s terracotta detailing is, hands down, among the city’s finest — and that’s saying something in Chicago — featuring color, abstract shapes, even green-and-gold dragons.
The building’s architects, Christian S. Michaelsen and Sigurd A. Rognstad, weren’t Chinese, had never stepped foot in China and had never previously designed a Chinese-inspired building.
But the On Leong merchant’s leader Jim Moy brought them on anyway, and the architects ended up getting the swing of things by studying academic works on Chinese architecture.
The On Leong building became the center of life in Chinatown for most of the 20th century.
Its merchants, acting as a chamber of commerce, funded and directed Chinatown’s growth. They helped Chinese immigrants get jobs and housing.
The 30,000-square-foot building had classrooms where kids learned English, brush writing and other Chinese languages. There was a Chinese drum-and-bugle corps there and even a court where disputes were settled.
Works Progress Administration writers called the building “Chinatown’s City Hall.”
“So basically, the community probably thought themselves as being just a southern China village dropped into Chicago and said they would handle kind of everything in life, just on its own,” Wu said. “Including keeping law and order.”
“This is the kind of building that comes to us, and it’s like: ‘This should have been before us a long time ago,’” said Amy Hathaway, national register specialist with the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office.
“It’s an amazing building, and its history, of course, with the Chinese community in Chicago is incredible. I can’t think of another property in Illinois that would have a closer association with Chinese history and culture.”
Chinatown’s ‘most important building’
By the 1970s, the merchants association started losing its power. The organization came to an end when Chicago police and federal agents raided the building in 1988. Authorities hauled out illegal gambling equipment from a secret second-floor casino and seized $350,000 in cash from a vault.
The FBI seized the building. And this once proud symbol of Chinatown stood vacant and deteriorating until the Chinese Christian Union Church bought the edifice in 1993 and returned it to its original (and legal) purposes.
Since then, the church rehabilitated the building. Recently, it spent $900,000 to restore the structure’s picturesque main entry canopy, according to Wu, who hopes a national register listing would improve efforts to raise additional money for more work on the building.
“The church’s work is religious,” he said. “Our work is in human service. But, you know, we’re the stewards of the most important building in Chinatown. And that’s why we’ve tried to preserve it.”
Chinatowns around the country have been left at risk because of property prices and pressure to redevelop them. In 2023, the National Trust for Historic Preservation started a program to help save these historic neighborhoods.
Unlike in other cities, though, Chicago’s Chinatown is thriving. Getting the On Leong building listed on national register — and all the good that could come from it — will help the area continue to flourish.
That’s good for Chinatown. And the city.
