Memories told by Crystal Wong Shors
“The mall was pleasant this morning; still it's always a little strange now to walk in a place that should be so familiar. Only a few mortar and brick ghosts of our childhood in a neighborhood so “bad” it had to be nearly erased.
“We all have different memories of this place. My dad, born on West Main Street some 90 years ago, could remember where every building was, where every large and small event of his life in this neighborhood occurred. But I need to look at Tower Hill so I can remember where my house was, need to look at the Colwell Building so I can remember where Wing Shing was. I do remember roller skating down the sidewalk and the intriguing smells of beer and smoke emanating from the bars if I skated by when the doors were open.
“More, I remember the people who populated this place. Mothers, children, craftsmen, artists, business owners, workers and slackers. And I remember a small group of old Chinese men, sitting companionably at the back of Charlie’s store, speaking their secret language and ignoring children at the counter selecting penny candy one piece at a time. These old men were the last of Helena’s Chinese pioneers, though once long ago there were many of them who lived and worked here. They won't be named on Lance's wall; their time was too long ago for our memories. But, like Sam Lee who owned a substantial store in a brick building on lower State Street, they were here, worked and lived their lives here. There just isn't anyone who remembers.”
– Crystal Wong Shors, Sept. 2011
"Helena Palimpsest" by Lance Foster
Project Statement by artist Lance Foster
As a lifelong Helenan and kid who learned how to do art in Helena's schools, I am only happy to have been allowed to submit my own ideas for the project. I remember very well downtown Helena just before, and then during, Urban Renewal. I remember going to see “Fantasia” at the Marlow Theater and eating fried shrimp from Yat-Son’s Chinese Restaurant. When I was 6, we were trying to find a new place to live, and Mom called “Dorothy’s Rooms,” on the chance it had rooms for rent. Dorothy herself answered the phone, replying “Oh honey, this isn’t the kind of place you want to have your family live.”
Places are palimpsests, layers of time and sometimes only a fragment remaining to show what was there originally. My interest in the project is very much a part of my personal history and memory of Helena and the importance of remembering EVERYTHING.
The designs on the walls are site-specific to within a stone’s throw of the site- even more site specific than “Helena” or “downtown.” In my project, I proposed to restore a part of the palimpsest of community memory, primarily symbolized by the Chinese and Dorothy’s Rooms which were within a stone’s throw of each other in downtown Helena.
The interaction of the Chinese and Brothels in Helena, and their image in popular culture: urban renewal, Chinese feng shui gate as a guardian to the inner world of the Chinese and red-light communities, Chinese takeout carton as both popular stereotype and community memory (House of Wong and Yat Son next door; Yat Son later across the street), the infamous round bed and article about Big Dorothy—all behind a Dragon Gate.
The casual observer sees only what the community wants to be seen. The huge missing sections of images represent the fact that though we think we know the facts, the truth, we never really do, not unless we ourselves were part of the hidden community ourselves. We believe we enter the past, but there is always the greater part the remains unknown. The last gate with iconic image of the garage and car during Urban Renewal reminds us of that process that still reverberates to today.
GATE 1: Entryway of Gate: “Dragon Gate”
- Dragon Gate - installed 2011
According to artist Lance Foster: In Chinese art, dragons are typically portrayed as long, scaled, serpentine creatures with four legs. In yin and yang terminology, a dragon is yang and complements a yin fenghuang "Chinese phoenix."
In contrast to European dragons, which are considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck.
The Dragon Gate represents the energy of Helena’s mountains through a Chinese traditional lens. Below is Mount Helena and the sun is actually the Pearl of Wisdom.
Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck.
The Chinese call the dragon 'lung' (long) because it is deaf. It is the largest of scaly animals, and it has the following nine characteristics. Its head is like a camels, its horns like a deer's, its eyes like a hare's, its ears like a bull's, its neck like an iguana's, its belly like a frog's, its scales like those of a carp, its paws like a tiger's, and its claws like an eagle's. It has nine times nine scales, it being the extreme of a lucky number.
On each side of the dragons mouth are whiskers, under its chin or floating just out of reach is a bright pearl, on the top of its head the 'poh shan' or foot rule, without which it cannot ascend to heaven.
The Dragon Pearl
The dragon's pearl can be thought of as a symbol for universal Qi the progenitor of all energy and creation. The dragons seem to be depicted in attitudes of pursuit. He is seen to be reaching out eagerly to clutch at the elusive object, mouth open in anticipation and eyes bulging with anticipation of achieving the prize afforded by clutching the pearl.
In Taoist concepts the moon, pearls, dragons and serpents are inextricably linked. Like the snake that is reborn when it sheds its skin, the moon is reborn each month, and both are symbols of immortality.
Contact Information
Helena Public Art Committee
City of Helena Community Development
Room 445
4th Floor, City-County Building
316 N. Park Avenue
Helena MT 59623
(406) 447-8491
kmacefield(at)ci.helena.mt.us
GATE 1: Entryway of Gate: “Memory Wall”
- Memory Wall mural - installed 2011
Helena once had a thriving Chinese community (aka Helena Chinatown) which reached from where the library is now, over to Reeder's Alley and up to the Chinese gardens at the split to Unionville and Grizzly Gulch. There were hundreds of Chinese that worked and lived here between 1865 through the 1890s, but they began to leave over the later decades until by the 1950s there were only a fraction of what there were previously. Abuse and racism took their toll. There had been Chinese physicians and herbalists, restaurants, stores, groceries, hotels, laundries, gaming houses. By the 1970s, there were pretty much only three descendant families left in Helena, to all accounts.
The art style is influenced by the Ashcan School of urban New York during the early 1900s and Muriel Wolle's paintings of the mining camps in Montana... I wanted it to be intimate, familiar, gritty, industrial. Wong See Q. was a leader in the Helena Chinese community.
List of historical sites in Helena with Chinese heritage
These are the sites remembered by the descendant families still connected to Helena. There were once hundreds of Chinese and their businesses, most now lost to memory.
What are those Chinese characters?
Written Chinese is not alphabetic; each character represents an idea or word, but can also represent a syllable. Each of these three characters represents one of the three syllables in Helena, although it is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages, such as Cantonese (the Chinese language spoken by the great majority of Helena's Chinese population historically) and Mandarin (a northern language used as the common language by most in modern China).
GATE 2: Entryway of Gate: “Sometimes I Feel Like Chinese Takeout”
- Sometimes I Feel Like Chinese Takeout mural - installed 2011
- Artist Lance Foster inside Chinese Takeout carton
This one is just plain fun. "Sometimes I feel like Chinese takeout" is a reference to this location being the hotspot for fantastic Chinese food for decades in Helena, notably at Wong’s and Yat Son, until Urban Renewal tore down the restaurants in the early 1970s.
But also you can stand in the opening and really feel like you are Chinese takeout food, and get your photo taken here to prove it!
Gate 2: Dorothy's Room
- Dorothy's Room
A lot of people think that "Big Dorothy" operated her bordello in the Windbag. But it was really upstairs, above the Windbag, with the entrance in the rear at 19 1/2, up at the top of these stairs. The St. Louis block was built as a drygoods store back in 1882, and it wasn't until 1927 during the Prohibition that Ida ran her bordello called "Ida's Rooms" in the building. It wasn't until the late 1950s that Dorothy bought the business and renamed it "Dorothy's Rooms," which was closed down in 1973.
My painting shows the infamous round red bed at Dorothy's, based on a historic photo. I simplified it, added the ashtray with burning cigarette, and tweaked the colors to be more lurid looking, inspired by Van Gogh's "The Night Café." He said: "I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.” The houseplant is a Dracaena marginata, or "dragon tree," not "palm trees" as some speculated, and was in the original photo. It is an interesting coincidence that this "dragon tree" thus links with the Dragon Wall!
And don’t forget - you can take a photo of yourself “on” Dorothy’s bed!
Several newspaper accounts told Dorothy's story. Headlines from the Rocky Mountain News, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Helena Independent Record and the Great Falls Tribune are listed on this mural.
Urban Renewal
- Urban Renewal mural - installed 2011
