White Rice Inn photograph and ephemera collection

In 1869, the final spike of the transcontinental railroad was laid in Promontory Summit, Utah, uniting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. As the thousands of Chinese laborers who had substantially contributed to the project's construction returned to cities and towns in the American West, they were largely met by a tide of anti-Chinese sentiment, including racist legislation and riots in cities like Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In an attempt to escape the violence and persecution as well as find more work, many Chinese Americans headed eastward, with some eventually settling in Baltimore, Maryland.

The first Chinese people most likely arrived in Baltimore during the early 1870s and by the 1880s, the city's Chinatown was firmly established. This first iteration was primarily located on the 200 block of Marion Street and consisted of a few scattered laundries, gambling houses, restaurants, and "joss houses" or Chinese temples. After World War I, Chinatown would move slightly northeast to Park Avenue and Mulberry Street (where some remnants can still be seen today). Although the early Chinese-American immigrants in Baltimore were largely single men, by the 1920s many had married and were starting families. Thus, the gambling houses began to be replaced by more family-owned businesses such as laundries and restaurants. The local church, Grace and St. Peter's at 707 Park Avenue, also became a vital community gathering spot as well, with more Chinese-Americans choosing to convert to Christianity.

Although Chinese students were able to attend white schools--the first, Hom Let, entered the Baltimore school system in 1897--many were still discriminated against. One of the largest reasons so many Chinese decided to open restaurants, laundries, and other small businesses is due to the lack of job opportunities outside of their own communities and the government. The lack of racial tensions concerning the Chinese, at least when compared to other American cities like San Francisco, is largely attributed to the fact that the Chinese population in Baltimore was never as numerically significant as it was in other places (due in part to racially-motivated federal anti-immigration legislation in the late-19th and early-20th centuries).

The Baltimore Chinese population experienced a boom during the 1940s due to multiple factors such as wartime prosperity and the passing of the Magnuson Act in 1943. This Act repealed the racist Chinese Exclusion Act, allowing Chinese immigration to resume, and for some already residing in America, permitted Chinese-Americans to finally become naturalized citizens. These events, however, were not enough to sustain Baltimore's Chinatown for long and beginning in the 1950s, many Chinese families left for the suburbs. As a 1952 article in the Afro-American notes: "Baltimore's Chinatown was always small.... Now it is even smaller"(Matthews, 1952, 8).

It is in the 1950s, at this transitional time between boom and decline, that Robert Lew (1903-1976) opened the White Rice Inn at 320 Park Avenue. The White Rice Inn operated at that location until Lew's widow, Mrs. Anna May Lew (nee Hong), sold the building in 1996. In addition to the White Rice Inn, the Lews' owned the Shang Wah Long Company--a Chinese grocery and gift shop--a few doors down at 304-306 Park Avenue as well as another restaurnt, the Rice Bowl, located in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Both of these businesses have also closed.

Today, little remains of Baltimore's Chinatown aside from a few remaining businesses and old signs, transitioning into an enclave for Ethiopian immigrants. There have been numerous discussions since the 1970s about revitalizing the area and honoring its Chinese heritage. In 2017, artist Jeff Huntington painted a mural depicting a Chinese dragon and the Conquering Lion of Judah, which represents the Ethiopian presence in the neighborhood.