SAN JOSE — Whenever Jimi Yamaichi approaches the historic Ken Ying building in Japantown, the memories come pouring out. On a recent Saturday, Yamaichi looked up at its distinct second-story balcony and its rounded, bubble-like roofing, reminiscent of old Chinese architecture.

“It’s the only place in San Jose that has a roof like that,” the 93-year-old said. The building that was a staple of Yamaichi’s childhood is now home to Wenzhou Noodle house, which opened its doors last month.

The restaurant — with its fresh paint, elegant wood paneling and traditional Chinese dishes — offers a promising look into the city’s future, but with a nod to the past. Located at 625 N. 6th St., Wenzhou has breathed new life into one of the city’s historic landmarks and one of the only establishments left standing from San Jose’s old Chinatown.

Owners Carol Chen and Max Soloviev said they were deeply inspired to preserve this extensive history. Husband and wife recall spending many hours at the library researching the property.

“In our mind it’s very clear: In the years coming, we don’t want this history to get lost,” said Chen, 44. “That was the beginning of our passion and why we want to save the building and tell everyone of its history. That’s the whole reason we got this building,” she said.

The commercial space, built sometime between 1890 and 1905, has taken on many forms throughout the decades, a reflection of the city’s evolving and ever-changing demographics. The two-story building started off as a Japanese boarding house for workers from Kumamoto province but was sold to Jimmy Ng in 1915, who opened up the Ken Ying Low chop suey restaurant. Ng contracted master craftsmen known as the “Nishiura Brothers” to add a distinctive balcony to the front of the building, among other features popular in local Chinese architecture at the time. The restaurant thrived in the city’s Chinatown, known as Heinlenville, until the 1950s, according to city staff.

It would later become a Filipino restaurant and a Cuban restaurant before falling into extreme disrepair in 2009. The city named the building a historic landmark in 2010.

Heinlenville thrived adjacent to Japantown from 1887 until it was razed in the 1930s, and the building is in many ways a symbolic merging of both cultures. At the time Heinlenville was phased out, Japantown surfaced as a thriving community, with Japanese immigrants settling in San Jose to pursue agricultural work in the area.

Brian Grayson, executive director of the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, said Chen and Soloviev went to great lengths to maintain the building’s old architecture.

“When we’re able to save a building, it doesn’t always get commemorated in a way that people understand the history and what went on there,” he said. “We’re always pleased when something like this happens, when an aging, deteriorated building is saved and brought back and becomes a contributing member of the community.”

After purchasing the property in 2009, Chen and Soloviev submitted an application with the city to remodel and restore the building back to its original use as a Chinese restaurant. But remodeling came to a halt as quickly as it started in 2014, when contractors discovered significant deterioration and substandard conditions that required partial demolition of the building and special clearance from the city, according to public documents. The front facade of the structure was kept intact. It was a project that dragged on for several years and that ultimately required a $2 million investment, according to the couple.

The task was particularly difficult for Chen and Soloviev, who did not have previous entrepreneurship experience. Chen, who’s in real estate, said she’s soaked up expertise from family members who own restaurants and from her mother, who contributed some of her secret recipes to Wenzhou’s menu. Soloviev, a native of Moscow, is an engineer.

Today the same touches of what was once the Ken Ying restaurant can be seen at Wenzhou, but with a modern flair. The restaurant serves traditional handmade fish noodles and other dishes from Chen’s native Wenzhou, a city in China’s southeastern Zhejiang province. One of their most popular dishes is the “silky knocked fish soup,” noodles made of tenderized fish filet and potato starch.

Yamaichi, a lifelong San Jose resident, still remembers the many purposes that the building had as he was growing up: a second-floor gambling room. A barber shop. Drugstore. He has particular memories of Ng, owner of the original Chinese restaurant.

“Every 4th of July, he would sell firecrackers. He would keep firecrackers from Chinese New Year (celebrations) in February and resell them on the 4th of July,” said Yamaichi, curator of the Japanese American Museum in San Jose.

Soloviev, 44, hopes those memories live on inside the walls of Wenzhou Noodle.

“There are still people who remember it how it used to be (like Jimi), but the next generation won’t have this kind of experience,” Soloviev said. “If this building collapsed and it was built into something else, this mapping between the history, its location and the originality is lost. We like originality.”

Contact Tatiana Sanchez at 408-920-5836. Follow her at Twitter.com/TatianaYSanchez.