(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 27, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 30, 2025

Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church has fostered community for more than 100 years

By Jean Sherrard

It was Friday, June 13, 1952. Fifteen 4- and 5-year-olds gathered for a graduation ceremony at Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church nursery school, dressed in pint-sized mortarboards and black gowns. The school’s supervisor, Mrs. Harry Ruehlen, handed diplomas to each graduate.

Among them was Betty Lau, who still remembers the

musty basement classroom, the smell of chalk dust and the comfort of belonging.

Seven decades later, Lau stands before the same brick façade, joined by several former classmates. They reminisce about games, songs and afternoon naps, recalling how the church provided a place of warmth and community in post-war Seattle.

Founded in 1892, the Chinese Baptist Church served generations of families who made their homes and livelihoods in the surrounding neighborhood. Originally an outreach mission of Seattle First Baptist Church, it combined prayer services with English lessons for Chinese immigrants.

With no permanent home, early congregants first gathered in private homes and leased halls in old Chinatown. In 1902, they built a modest structure at Maynard Avenue South and South Washington Street. Two decades later, in 1922, the growing congregation purchased property at 10th Avenue South and South King Street.

By the early 1950s, Chinese Baptist served as a

spiritual center and anchor for young children whose parents worked long hours nearby. Its nursery school offered early education, socialization and — perhaps most important — a sense of place and welcome.

Lau recalls her teachers’ patient voices, one in English and one in Chinese, and the joy of receiving her diploma, which she kept for years. “I was very shy in public, but nursery school felt normal, like being in a bigger family,” she says with a smile. “I didn’t know the word ‘community’ yet, but that’s what it was.”

In the decades since, the church building has changed hands, and the neighborhood around it has evolved. Yet for Lau and her classmates, returning to that spot rekindles vivid memories of friendship, faith and beginnings.

Retired after 41 years as a secondary-school teacher, Lau sees clear lines between that early experience and her lifelong devotion to education and youth activities.

“Understanding where we come from,” she says, “gives students confidence and connection. Those who feel seen and supported thrive and carry that forward.”

The basement classroom may be long gone, but its lessons endure. Each reminiscence shared among Lau and her classmates summons cherished childhood scenes of caps and gowns — and parental pride — from a June day more than 70 years ago, when the future felt as bright as a diploma freshly handed to a 5-year-old.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click through here.

Just to make trouble, I’m appending the initial draft of the column I submitted to The Times. In a Now & Then first, our editors summarily rejected it. It took a complete rewrite to ease it into print. 

Here’s the original version that was, said the Times, not ready for prime time:

Chinatown longtimers shun ‘international’ label: ‘We are Americans’

It was Friday, June 13, 1952. Fifteen 4 and 5-year-olds gathered for a graduation ceremony at Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church nursery school, dressed in tiny mortarboards and black gowns. The school’s supervisor, Mrs. Harry Ruehlen, handed diplomas to each graduate.

Among them was Betty Lau, who still remembers the musty basement classroom, the smell of chalk dust and the thrill of belonging.

Seven decades later, Lau stands at that same brick façade, surrounded by former classmates and recalling with a smile how the church offered sanctuary in a city that had long drawn invisible lines denoting where Chinese families could and couldn’t live. Those borders, she says, still define a struggle for identity in Seattle’s Chinatown.

It was a pattern etched long before her time.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made Chinese immigrants the first group in U.S. history barred by race and nationality. In Seattle, exclusion persisted through property covenants, housing codes and loan denials that confined Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Black residents to a few downtown blocks.

Redlining maps from the 1930s shaded Chinatown bright pink — “hazardous”— a warning to banks not to invest.

This was coupled by what was labeled progress.

In 1928, the street called the Second Avenue Extension sliced through the second Chinatown, forcing re-location to King Street. The Interstate 5 corridor carved away another section in the 1960s. Construction of the Kingdome in the 1970s further impacted the neighborhood.

Each project promised renewal. Each time, Chinatown’s footprint shrank.

In 1951, a year before Lau’s nursery-school graduation, Mayor William Devin renamed Chinatown by proclamation, calling it the International Center. For the Chinese community, it felt like erasure.

Restaurateur Ruby Chow, who became the first Asian American elected to the King County Council — and become Lau’s mentor — bristled. The city of Seattle, she believed, had created a “reservation.”

“International,” son Brien Chow argues, implies Asian Americans are perpetual outsiders when they are Americans.

The linguistic sleight-of-hand eventually became civic policy, morphing into “International District,” then, as mandated by a 1999 city ordinance, “Chinatown International District” – the collective name of Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon.

Retired after 41 years as a secondary-school teacher, Lau says identity is essential to belonging.

“Understanding place and heritage,” she says, “gives students pride and connection. Those who are secure in their self-identity thrive and strengthen community.”

As former classmates gather with her at the church’s entrance, Lau eyes the neighborhood that raised them. Whatever any signs may read, for her it always will remain Chinatown.

So what do you think, gentle readers, on this rainy Thanksgiving? Interested to hear your opinions…