San Francisco’s Chinatown, with its Edwardian-style buildings and theatrical facades, would be unrecognizable today by the Chinese immigrants who came to the city in the mid-1800s.

Their Chinatown — a place of unending racist attacks, hardship, entrepreneurship and resilience — was flattened by the fire and earthquake of 1906. The people that survived were relegated to a tent city on Van Ness Avenue, forbidden to return to the rubble of their former homes while National Guard volunteers ransacked their few remaining possessions.