As far as hidden gems go, the historic Chinese Temple in Cambria fits the definition and then some.
Unknown to even years-long residents of its native San Luis Obispo County, the temple—or rather the wooden sign proclaiming its existence—came into view when I was trying to find a parking spot on a backroad near downtown.
Weeks later, I strolled down 2264 Center St. and found an unassuming red wooden building on the Cambria Land Trust or Greenspace’s lush Creekside Reserve property. The final survivor of a cluster of historical buildings created by 19th-century Chinese settlers who labored as quicksilver miners and abalone gatherers, the Chinese Temple—also called a joss house—came under Greenspace’s care in the 1990s.
“Greenspace is primarily a land trust and environmental advocacy organization. This is unique,” Greenspace board member and voluntary curator John Seed told me when we met in front of the temple. “This is the only structure that Greenspace has preserved.”
The temple’s well-wishers go beyond Greenspace. They’re visible as soon as you step foot on the reserve thanks to the Patron Pathway. Planned to consist of 222 brick nameplates, the walkway bears the names of several community members who supported open space preservation by paying $500 for a brick.
Longstanding board director Wayne Attoe joined Seed on the tour of the temple. Attoe served as Greenspace board president in 1999 when the land trust acquired the site. A 35-year Cambria resident, he remembers when Greenspace raised money to buy the deteriorating building.
“In the process of buying it, we learned that this is one of only five Chinese temples left in California from the 19th century,” Attoe said. “The others are all north of Sacramento.”
A historian’s memory
Attoe’s memory is long. Once a teaching assistant in architectural history at UC Berkeley, he remembers how dilapidated the additional buildings attached to the temple were. He not only remembers the fundraising process to restore the structure but also recollects the effort to physically move it from a nearby adjacent lot to where it currently sits in the Creekside Preserve.
“There was a house in our parking lot, and the new owners moved the temple and attached it to the existing house. It became the living room,” he said. “They brought another building from Main Street that became the kitchen.”
Attoe is referring to the 1925 remodel of the Warren family residence commonly referred to as the Red House. Known as the Chinese Center in the 1800s, the small batch of structures along Santa Rosa Creek in downtown Cambria became a hub for Chinese settlers until the Warrens purchased it. There, the settlers could celebrate traditional holidays and events, write letters home, share information, gamble, cook, and converse in their native language. By the 1920s, most of those Chinese migrants had left the Central Coast for San Francisco, effectively abandoning the Cambria structures.
Roughly 70 years after that, when later generations of the Warrens sold their residence to Greenspace, two of the buildings attached to the temple emerged as unsalvageable.
“The [Warren family] house had not been maintained, and the property was for sale,” Attoe said. “We wanted to conserve it because it’s in this natural setting and there’s wildlife here. But we also got this house as part of the deal, and it was falling apart.”
However, he added, the original temple showed promise.
With funding from the Hind Foundation—the same group that awarded Greenspace the grant to successfully pursue historical recognition for the temple in 2020—and donations from Cambrians, the land trust managed to relocate and restore the building.
“We didn’t want to restore it up there … because, well, it’s forested now and they changed where the floodplain was,” Attoe said, pointing to a spot several feet from where we stood. “This is the closest we could get. We thought this was a nice spot: faces water and it faces in the correct direction, east. Cambria directions are not easy to remember!”
But few remain to make up the local population that once gathered in the temple.
“None of the Chinese established a family. One principal reason is that women weren’t allowed to migrate, and they weren’t allowed to own land,” Attoe said.
The last known descendant of those early Chinese settlers who came to the area in the 1800s was a man named Mr. Wong, according to Seed. The remnants of his house are still on the coastline above the town of Harmony.
“I understand that he had two sons who went to Coast Union High School, who are probably elderly or even deceased now, but several people remember him,” Seed said.
Attoe’s research unearthed studies by a historian who found that Chinese immigrants had cordial relations with the locals of Cambria, and they celebrated Chinese New Year together. But, in Arroyo Grande, there were reported incidents of hostility between the immigrants and locals.
“The contrast interests me,” Attoe said.
Curating the past
Now, the Chinese Temple—also called Association House—rests humbly at Creekside Preserve.
The restoration of the wooden building with a wraparound porch belies its age. Usually, the front doors are shut, hiding what lies within.
While the Creekside Reserve open space can easily be accessed by members of the public if they want to look at the temple’s exterior, the interior can only be enjoyed during special events.
Voluntary curator Seed directed me to a rare sight: the Chinese Temple with wide open doors awaiting our entry.
Together with Attoe, we stepped inside the humble historic site, burnished red-painted wood siding receding behind the cool jade-blue walls and ceiling.
Dark wood benches, shelves, chairs, and tables accentuate the space. A reconstruction of a partial plaque in Chinese script that read “Temple dedicated to Ti Kwan Ti” rests on the floor. But all our eyes were transfixed on the large square altar flanked by framed red strips bearing Chinese characters. The altar contained a five-branched candelabrum, small sculptures of storks, an incense bowl, a blue and white porcelain vase, and hanging Chinese lanterns.
“You want to remember, it was the living room of a ranch house for maybe 60 to 70 years, and we’re told that it would have had the family’s items, and there was a television on the altar,” Seed said.
Attoe mentioned that when the Warrens attached the temple to their living room, they cut a window over the altar and a door in the adjacent wall. The family also whitewashed the interior and put in linoleum flooring.
“When we came to restore it, we had to remove all the whitewash, which was a difficult job,” Attoe said. “This is the original paint. Not just the original color.”
The restorers also nixed the linoleum floor, revealing the original Douglas fir hardwood flooring. Some of the furniture, he added, was donated by a Morro Bay woman from her mother’s 1920s collection.
Seed referred to Attoe’s knowledge about the presence of a deity figure that used to be within the temple.
“In Wayne’s history, there were two women who still lived in town, older women, that remembered a gold statue inside from their childhood,” Seed said.
The figure might have been Taoist depicting the Chinese god of war Guandi. Seed stressed that the temple isn’t a Buddhist one even though many stories about the Cambria site claim so. With the temple restored, he’s on a quest to liven it up further.
“Something I’ve told the Greenspace board is, I would like to acquire a deity, you know, an authentic Chinese statue,” he said. “I would love to accept donations or start a fund for getting us a statue.”
He’s also keeping an eye out for what he calls “authentic items” to populate the temple altar. He pointed to the latest additions to the temple: wide-brimmed laborers’ hats donated by a local.
“These are some laborers’ hats that a family kept that go back to the time when Chinese laborers were working here. So, I would call them ‘authentic,'” Seed said. “And in here are maybe, some pottery shards, a few implements and items, and I think some of these would be considered authentic.”
But not every bit of paraphernalia passes the test.
“The one painting that’s actually from Nepal, it’s not even Chinese, so it’s an Asian decorative item to add atmosphere,” he said.
Community connectivity
Seed’s move to Cambria five-and-a-half years ago brought him up close to the Chinese Temple. He’s since visited one in Mendocino kept open by the great, great-granddaughter of one of the men who built it.
The Greenspace board member also has ambitions to visit the Fresno Historical Society to check out its collection of Chinese antiques and historical items identified from the city’s demolished Chinatown.
“I was also drawn by the idea that this is an area where the community really steps up and conserves and takes care of itself, you know,” he said. “So I expressed interest in this and connected with Greenspace.”
For Attoe, conservation through Greenspace gave his life another direction. In 1996, he was “building a house in a place that shouldn’t have been built” about 13 miles away from the Creekside Preserve.
A view of the coastline sparked a desire in him to do something more than just build: He wanted to preserve.
“So, I saw a little ad in the paper about this organization, and I sent in $50,” Attoe, who served as Greenspace’s board president for 17 years, recalled with a laugh. “One of my neighbors up there was on the board, and he was leaving the board, and I had been a member for a year, and he suggested that I run for president.”
Breathing new life into the Chinese Temple isn’t the only conservation achievement for Greenspace. It also has its finger on the pulse of the Cambria Monterey pine forest near the temple.
“There are only three left in the United States, and only five in the world. Four of them are not capable of regenerating,” Attoe said.
Greenspace conserved the forest by raising money to buy portions of the forest, with the biggest section being Strawberry Canyon. It’s also committed to reforestation. In the last few years, the land trust has planted 6,000 Monterey pine seedlings in the state park on the edge of Cambria.
Since 1988, Greenspace has protected ecological systems and forest habitats through land acquisition and management, along with public education and advocacy. But it’s the Chinese Temple that added heritage site preservation to the land trust’s list of commitments.
“At the time, people wondered: it’s a land trust. Why were we getting involved?” Attoe said. “The reason was we wanted to save this piece of landscape … We were prepared to tear [the temple] down and then we learned it was historically important even though it doesn’t look important.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Nov 7-17, 2024.