Asian American Heritage Site Survey

Role of Heritage Services

• Identify, evaluate, interpret and manage heritage sites at Stanford• Represent Stanford’s heritage programs to government agencies• A department of Land, Buildings and Real Estate• A team of archaeologists, historians, and collections staff

Why Study Asian American Sites Now?• Campus planning• Chinese Railroad Workers Project• Sesquicentennial of Transcontinental Railroad in 2019• Leland Stanford• NPS Theme Study

NPS Theme Study

“A theme study of this nature fills in the spaces, the silences, which obscure or obliterate so many critical issues…”

Heritage Goals

• Make Asian American heritage sites at Stanford visible and accessible as resources for academic research, teaching, interpretation

• Develop data and collections for future research• Connect to Asian American descendant communities: Chinese,

Japanese, Filipino• Identify preservation strategies and priorities in consultation with

descendant communities

Survey Objectives• Identify Asian American heritage sites at Stanford (Chinese, Japanese,

Filipino)• Consider how these sites compare to Asian American sites in California and

the WestMining camps, railroad camps, internment camps, logging camps, mill towns, work camps, Chinatowns, Japantowns, Little Manila, shrimp camps, fishing villages, farms, canneries, flower farms, nurseries, laundries, restaurants, stores, health facilities, boarding houses

• Develop a research design that links Stanford sites to the comparative framework

• Determine whether sites have potential to contribute significant information

First Phase: Employees of the Stanfords and of the University• Substantial scholarly literature on immigration and labor conditions• Important archival collections to complement archaeological

investigations• Much larger representations among staff than faculty and students in

early years on the campus

Sources: Maps

Sources: Legacy Collections

Sources: Archival Records

Ah Sing Carpenter's Helper Improvement $1.15/day Ah Sing carpenter Improvement $1.08/day Ah Sing Raking Farm Ah Sing cook Garden & Grounds Boarding House $30/month Ah Sing servant Private Residence $30/month Ah Sing assistant cook Private Residence/Coutt's Place $30/month Ah Sing cook Coutt's Place Ah Sing cook illegible $1/day Ah Socke hostler Private Residence $1/day Ah Suey cook Felt Place $0.83/day Ah Tan cook (and help) Stock Farm Boarding House $100/month Ah Tie cook Private Residence Ah Ting cook (and help) Running Horse Boarding House $35/month Ah Ting cook Crowley Place $0.83/day Ah Ting Lawn Garden & Grounds $1.15/day Ah Tom cart Stock Farm $1/day Ah Tom hostler Running Horse Ah Tom Raking Farm $1.25/day Ah Tom cook Running Horse Boarding House $1.16/day

Second phase: Faculty and Students

Photograph provided by Bernadine Fong