Morgan Ong

Broadway’s 1600 Block: Home to Two Thai Restaurants and Much More

 

The vision of creating a Los Angeles-style Thai Town, with its many Thai eateries and shops, apparently inspired the locational choice of Chada Thai near Taste of Thai in Sacramento. LA’s Thai Town along Hollywood Boulevard (between Normandie and Western avenues) in East Hollywood. It’s the most well-known Thai commercial area in America.  Thai Town has roots going back to the 1960s, when LA was a popular place for Thai students to study abroad.

Thai migration to the US was further stimulated by exposure to America via the military bases located in Thailand during the Vietnam War.  Sacramento, however, has many fewer Thai-Americans than does LA, making the emergence of a “Thai Town” or “Little Bangkok” much less likely.  The 2008 American Community Survey reports that there were about 3,700 people identifying as “Thai alone” in Sacramento County (compared to 19,400 in L. A. County), with nearly 3,000 speaking Thai at home.  So it is that Taste of Thai and Chada Thai added to the diverse mix of cuisines on Broadway, rather than becoming the nucleus of a more ethnically homogeneous commercial area. 

 

The South Side of the Block

After enjoying a meal at Chada Thai or Taste of Thai, stroll the length of the 1600 block of Broadway.  Notice that the south side of the street, on which the two restaurants are located, has retained a building stock that provides spaces for small businesses. This block is evidence enough for the proposition that Broadway has long been a “foodscape.”  Food has been for sale on the 1600 block since the block’s beginning in the second half of the 1920s, when grocery and produce stores opened up to serve the growing population of the Land Park neighborhood just to the south.  As the details below reveal, food in some form has been sold at 8 out of 13 addresses on the south side of the block.  Even before this, food was produced in the vicinity—the story of which still needs documenting. 

Through the years these spaces have been home to a variety of retail and service establishments, most often oriented to the local neighborhood, but with an occasional specialty business serving a larger market area, such as Tower Books and now The Avid Reader

  

1600 – From the 1926 to 1935 this lot was home to a gas station.  Five different men owned the business in this 10-year period.  In 1935, a “drive-in” market—meaning it provided off-street parking—opened in a new building on this site.  The market was made up of four separate retail units: a grocer, a butcher, a fruiter, and a delicatessen.  This arrangement was common at that time, as the food business transitioned from small specialized units to larger “supermarkets.”  This market was originally part of the Cardinal chain, which was later absorbed by Lucky.  A grocery store-meat market combination lasted in the space until 1975.  At that time, it became the home of Tower Books, Posters, and Plants, part of Russ Solomon’s Tower media retailing empire.  Now it houses The Avid Reader.

 

1610 – This address was briefly occupied by a wood yard and then a used car lot in the 1930s.  It shows up briefly in the 1960s as a residence.

 

1612 – Appearing for the first time in the 1960s, this address housed a barbershop and then Joe’s Shoe Repair, which was replaced in 1976 by The Image Weavers, a short-lived used book store.  The address was not listed in any subsequent year.

 

1614 – From the late 1930s, this space has been home to a wide variety of neighborhood-serving businesses, selling in turn groceries, bikes, radios and TVs, insurance, real estate, artificial flowers, tax services, and sporting goods.  The address was not listed after 1980.

 

1616 – Groceries and meats went on sale here in the early 1930s, to be replaced by 1940 by a furniture store and subsequently by fluorescent lighting, seed, and shoe repair businesses.  The address was not listed after 1967.

 

1618 – Ferguson’s Juvenile Shoes opened in 1952, and was replaced in succession by Camellia City Ceramics, Capitol Speed Shop (auto parts), Tower Posters and Plants, Tower Video, and most recently, just plain Records. 

 

1620 – Produce and groceries were on sale here from the late 1920s for nearly a decade.  Several different people operated restaurants at this address over the next five years.  After that, the space was sometimes used by businesses also occupying 1616 and 1618, such as Central Valley’s Seed or Capitol Speed.  A florist and a dog groomer followed; stability arrived in the form of a 15-year stint by a shore-repair shop.  China Culture City came in with the new millennium, followed by Travel for Less and African Safari. 

 

1622 – This address did not appear until the 1970s, and occupants duplicate those listed at other addresses above.  For example, China Culture City was first listed here in 1990, with Orient Travel following a few years later.  Ava Video Audio appeared in 2001.

 

1624 – An important American retail type, the variety store, aka the “Five and Ten” (a predecessor to today’s drug-and-variety stores) was here from 1940 until the mid-1960s under various names.  Schmidt’s Pastry and Coffee Shop replaced it, followed by a series of other eateries:  Broadway Pastry and Coffee Shop (for a while along with Lotus Garden restaurant, which previously had been at 1628), Café Broadway, Golden Wok Bakery Café, Jungle Bakery and Caffe, and Chada Thai Cuisine.  

 

1626 – From 1940 until 1975, this space was occupied by a beauty parlor, under a variety of names.  Man Sang Company grocery followed for a few years, as did a travel agency.  Beauty services reappeared in the guise of a nail salon.  Currently Tower Barber for Men and Women is the tenant.

 

1628 – The late 1920s saw a barber here and the late 1930s a seller of linoleum.  An unbroken string of restaurants started in 1942, with most in the early years going by their proprietor’s name, except for the Dairy Lane Fountain Lunch of the late 1940s.  The Lotus Gardens Café lasted from 1955 until 1978.  Kagetsu Japanese Restaurant followed.  Taste of Thai landed in the space in early 2002. 

 

1630 – During the 20-odd years of this address’s existence (c. 1927-1949), it housed grocers, restaurants, and then C. L. Merrick, baker. 

 

1632 – This triangular property has been home to a linoleum dealer, a household appliance store, a Laundromat, a clothing manufacturer, and since 1976, a veterinary hospital. 

 

 

 

The North Side

In contrast to the south side of Broadway’s 1600 block, you can see that the north side has become a simplified landscape consisting of a single large structure with parking lots.  To meet the needs of small businesses, and to keep a street interesting to pedestrians, it is important to retain stretches of Broadway like the one on the south side.  As suggested by the famous dictum, “form follows function” (a slight corruption of something Chicago architect Louis Sullivan once wrote), the north side reflects the importance of parking lots to the functioning of America’s automotive society, and big branch offices of major S&Ls or banks suggest the consolidation of financial power in our modern capitalist economy. Because from function also flows form, Broadway’s older buildings are part of why so many mom-and-pop eateries have found space there.   

 

1601 – From the late 1920s to the late 1960s, this corner was occupied by a gas station, at first independently owned; after World War II, it became part of Standard Stations, Inc.  This address disappeared from the city directory in 1970.

 

1607 – From 1940 until 1977, this address was occupied by a restaurant or café.  At first identified only by the owner’s name, by 1953 the place was called Mildred’s Restaurant, then Paramount Restaurant, then Connie’s Café, and finally The Stop Inn, from 1965 until 1977.

 

1609 – The first business at this address was a garage listed in the 1927 city directory.  Various other auto-related businesses came and went through the late 1930s.  Then in 1940, both Reid and Bradley Auto Repair and Harry Kawaguchi Bait are listed at this address.  The next year, the space was occupied by Shigeo Takeda Bait.  After a year of vacancy (likely triggered by the Japanese internment), the new tenant was A. J. Nelson Fish.  This morphed into Broadway Bait and Tackle after World War II and into Broadway Bait, Rod, and Gun Shop by 1970.  That store remained at this address through 1977 and then moved to new quarters at 1701 Broadway, where it remains today. 

 

1625 – Furniture was sold at this address for about ten years, starting just after World War II.  Following there was a decade of paint sales, first as Sierra Paint and then as Kelly Moore Paint Company, Inc., of Sacramento.  After 1965, this address disappeared. 

 

1631 – A Shell Oil Company gas station was on this corner from 1940 until the early 1960s.  After a brief stint as a used car lot, the space was built upon by Guild Savings and Loan Association.  Several architects also had their offices in this building in the 1960s and 1970s.  Guild S&L became Allstate S&L became American S&L became American Savings Bank became Washington Mutual became Chase.  Currently, this is the only building on the north side of the 1600 block of Broadway; the rest of the space is given over to parking. 

 

A Note on Thai-Americans

In 2008, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimated that there were about 220,000 people in the U. S. who considered themselves Thai “alone or in any combination.”  Of these, about 60 percent are foreign born.  Thai-Americans as a group (whether native- or foreign-born) have virtually the same median family income as Americans overall, even though Thais are quite a bit more likely to have bachelor’s or graduate degrees.  While under-represented in most employment sectors, Thai-Americans are hugely overrepresented in one sector: “arts, entertainment, recreation, and accommodation and food services.”  Twenty-eight percent of Thai-Americans work in that sector, compared to just nine percent of American workers as a whole.  The importance of restaurants in the Thai-American economy was noted in one of the few scholarly papers that has been written on Thai immigrants to the U. S.  That paper, published in 1979, described Thai migration to, and settlement in, Los Angeles, which has the largest Thai population outside Thailand.  In describing the spatial pattern of Thai-American businesses in LA, geographer Jacqueline Desbarats wrote:

“The outstanding feature of this distribution arises from the predominance and the ubiquity of food and catering establishments, with restaurants comprising one-third of all businesses.  This matches the results of the survey, which showed 30 percent of the respondents to be involved in catering.” 

 

--Robin Datel