Oroville Chinese Temple

About this property

The Oroville Chinese Temple (列聖宮) is a Chinese folk religious temple built in 1863 in Oroville, California. The temple is now owned by the City of Oroville and open to the public as a museum, and it also continues to be used occasionally for worship. In the latter half of the 19th century there were as many as 10,000 Chinese in the Oroville, California area. Just as with many of those that arrived in the area, they came primarily in search of gold. Starting with the California Gold Rush ca. 1849, the Chinese arrivals in Oroville for the first 20 years were only men since they were not allowed to bring their families. Most of these were from the Canton and Shanghai provinces. They brought little with them except their rich heritage, the will to succeed and the desire to return home wealthy. Shortly after arriving in Oroville around 1850, the Chinese population pooled existing resources and built the first Chinese temple in the area. This temple, constructed of wood, burned down as did a second rebuilt structure. The third structure and furnishings, funded by the Tongzhi Emperor and Empress Xiaozheyi, was built of red brick acquired from Palermo, California and was completed in September 1863. This is the same structure that exists on the site today. Over the years the structure withstood many fires and floods. However, in 1907 a massive flood caused damage affecting not only the temple but the entire Oroville area. This disaster combined with a concurrent economic depression in the United States resulted in a large exodus of Chinese from the area to other larger U.S. cities and back to China. Remaining Chinese continued to maintain the Chinese Temple complex (especially the Chan family) until the 1930s. During the 1930s a decision was made among these families to deed the complex to the City of Oroville and in 1937 the city officially took ownership of the complex. Three stipulations were guaranteed to the Chinese families for their contribution. The first was an agreement that the city would build a museum to house artifacts that the former complex did not have room to display. The second was to ensure that all three temples would remain available to the community to use for worship. The third and final was to teach volunteers at the center about the Chinese culture, beliefs and artifacts so that visitors could better understand these in context with their visit to the center. After construction of the promised structure was completed, the center reopened to visitors in July 1949. The temple was originally composed of three parts: the Chan Room for Confucian meditation, the Moon Temple, for Buddhist rites, and the Council Room, for community functions. Afterwards a number of modern additions have been made, including a Chinese tapestry hall, a display hall and a Chinese garden.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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