These photographs provided much-needed detail and context for a community all too often defined by stereotypes: the exotic tourist mecca replete with golden dragons and inexpensive restaurants; the booming business district, crowded with shopkeepers hawking ethnic foods, gaudy trinkets and mysterious potions; or the lurid, opium-fueled world of “Chinatown Nights,” a 1929 gangster film directed by William A. Wellman about a white socialite caught up in San Francisco’s Chinese underworld.

Beginning in the late-19th century, a series of federal laws — built on stereotypes, anxieties about white racial purity, and the fear of lost jobs — greatly restricted Chinese immigration to the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, was the first to bar a group on the basis of nationality or race. It placed draconian restrictions on prospective immigrants, including the exclusion of the wives and children of Chinese laborers already living in the country.

But the easing of immigration laws and quotas in the 1950s and 1960s precipitated an upsurge in Chinese settlement in the United States, dynamically altering Chinatown’s demographics, physical character and geography. Shops and small business were established, shuttered and reborn. Old buildings were demolished and replaced. The neighborhood’s boundaries expanded beyond its historical core streets. And Chinese communities arose and flourished in other parts of the city.

“All communities change,” wrote Mr. Glick. “However, looking at it now, the incredibly rapid growth and change distinguishes Chinatown from many other communities. What felt big at the time now seems small. Chinatown has expanded tremendously. It seems qualitatively different now. Today’s Chinatown is a dynamic community created by a new generation of immigrants.”