Stingaree, San Diego facts for kids

The Stingaree was a neighborhood in downtown San Diego a long time ago, starting in the 1880s. It was taken down around 1916 as part of a plan to clean up the city. This area was also home to San Diego's Chinatown. Because many working-class people lived there, it was sometimes seen as a place for people who were not always accepted by everyone. The Stingaree was in the middle of a larger area where many working families lived, covering much of the city south of Broadway.

Where Was the Stingaree?

The exact borders of the Stingaree neighborhood are not perfectly clear and probably changed over time. The Health Department, which helps keep people healthy, said the area was between First and Fifth Avenues (west and east) and Market and K Streets (north and south).

Chinese Community in the Stingaree

The southwest part of the Stingaree, between Market, K, First, and Fourth Streets, was where San Diego's Chinatown was located from the 1860s to the 1930s. During this time, Chinese people in California faced many challenges. There were even laws that made it hard for them to find jobs. This, along with difficulties in fishing, led to many Chinese people living in poverty and in their own separate communities.

Protests and Disagreements

Groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which worked to help people who had tough jobs, found many listeners in the Stingaree. These groups tried to organize the residents, but the city passed a rule in 1912 that stopped people from speaking in the streets. The police were given special powers to break up protests. When a famous speaker named Emma Goldman came to San Diego, people who disagreed with her forced her out of town. Her manager, Ben Reitman, was even kidnapped.

After this, there were years of protests by the IWW, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and other groups. The police often stopped these protests with force, which made the neighborhood a place with lots of disagreements and sometimes fights.

City's Actions to Change the Area

Starting in the 1880s, many politicians promised to "fix" the Stingaree, but most of these promises were not kept. In 1912, the Health Department began to clean up the area. This action was part of a bigger national movement that wanted to close down areas like the Stingaree.

Between 1912 and 1916, more than 120 buildings were torn down. This changed how the city looked and left many people without homes. A large part of Chinatown was also destroyed. The area remained a place with many challenges until it was redeveloped in the 1980s.

The Stingaree Today

The wild and busy feel of the old Stingaree neighborhood was finally removed by modern redevelopment. Many of the people who lived there, and the businesses that were considered "red-light" (meaning they were not always seen as proper), were removed using city methods like eminent domain, which allows the government to take private land for public use.

The goal of these redevelopment efforts was to turn the neighborhood into a fancy shopping area that looked like the 1880s. The new Gaslamp Quarter tries to recreate a "gaslamp era" town, but it doesn't really show what the Stingaree was actually like. The last parts of the neighborhood's original history have been replaced by this recreated historical look.