Support for LAist comes from
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Stay Connected
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Listen
Podcasts Take Two
The closure of this Chinatown hospital is the latest blow in the gentrifying neighborhood
solid orange rectangular banner
()
Dec 19, 2017
Listen 6:39
The closure of this Chinatown hospital is the latest blow in the gentrifying neighborhood
After 157 years, Chinatown's oldest hospital has closed its doors. It's one of the latest victims brought on by gentrification hitting the neighborhood in downtown LA.
LA Chinatown 2011
Outside the Pacific Alliance Medical Center in 2011.
(
Via Flickr user Clotee Pridgen Allochuku
)

After 157 years, Chinatown's oldest hospital has closed its doors. It's one of the latest victims brought on by gentrification hitting the neighborhood in downtown LA.

One of the oldest hospitals in Los Angeles has closed its doors. After 157 years serving the community in and around Chinatown, the Pacific Alliance Medical Center quietly shut down and laid off all 638 of its employees.

It had been a major hospital for that part of town, with a staff that spoke Mandarin and Cantonese, among other dialects, and became a fixture in the community.  Frank Shyong, who wrote about the closure for the L.A. Times, had this to say: 



"Chinatown for a lot of years and even going into today has been this area where immigrants just kind of land and figure things out. Having a hospital there, with a bunch of immigrants who couldn't speak English and didn't understand the American medical system and insurance, the hospital basically evolved services to fit that."

The hospital's closure is a symbol of the irreversible changes happening in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Shyong added. The change has been happening slowly over decades. As more and more Asian Americans moved to the San Gabriel Valley, it would seem that there is little left for Asian Americans in Chinatown. Yet, Shyong explained that the cultural and generational connection to the neighborhood remains strong.



"There are still lots of people who drive past the San Gabriel Valley from Redlands or wherever to go patronize the businesses that they're familiar with. And of course there's Little Tokyo and lots of these ancestral connections that are still maintained by the people and the generations left over."