Remembering Carlton Wong
SAN FRANCISCO, October 2003--The New Colonist lost a contributor, and San Francisco and Pittsburgh lost a great urban advocate, when Carlton Wong passed away recently following an extended illness.
Carlton grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown and grew to love the city. Seeing Carlton in action roaming the streets and explaining the history of the buildings and people brought to mind a quote from one of his favorite movies, Meet Me In Saint Louis. "Wasn't I lucky to have been born in my favorite city?"
It was only upon returning after years away from college that Carlton came fully to appreciate San Francisco's unique collection of Victorian housing. At a young age he became fascinated with the brick and stone architecture of eastern cities such as New York and Pittsburgh. I can say first hand, much of the housing stock in the east seems more substantial than the false-fronted wooden gingerbread of San Francisco. Yet often the ornamentation on San Francisco houses is done at a much larger scale. "No house in Pittsburgh has brackets like that," Carlton would point out.
An avid collector, Carlton also tried to build a collection of period houses, appreciating each for its uniqueness and original, untouched condition. He purchased a large Italianate house overlooking the Ohio River outside Pittsburgh in the early 1990s and spent his nights removing all of the bad remodeling the house suffered over the years. He purchased marble and granite mantles from salvage yards and had them installed. The house proved to be too much of a project, however, taking up more than ten years of hard work. Carlton fell ill before it could be finished.
Another house that met Carlton's eye was an 1830s farm house outside of Youngstown, where he had found a job after finishing medical school. It retained amost every original detail, down to the windows and a skeleton key in the front door. It also had a sizable piece of land he would never consider developing. When he returned to California to help his family, he sold the house. Returning later, he was upset that all the original windows had been removed and replaced, and the land sold off and developed with tract housing.
Then there was the San Francisco Victorian cottage. It wasn't intact, but was of interest still because of how the house revealed pieces of San Francisco history. It was apparent that there were three remodelings. The house was built in the 1880s; the first remodeling was around 1906, probably after damage following the great earthquake. A brick fireplace, hardwood floors, and dark paneling had been added. The second remodeling was in the 1950s when another earthquake shook apart a stone Carnegie Library that had been at the corner. At that time aluminum siding, aluminum windows, and a new foundation were added. Carlton had always planned to add Victorian details to the exterior, and amassed a collection of corbels and other details with that "demodeling" in view.
The last house Carlton would purchase was an 1850s Greek Revival townhouse in Pittsburgh, a city he planned to return to. A few days after purchasing it, he recalled the countless times through the years when he gazed at the ornate doorway and details. "I have stood admiring this doorway many times," he would say. "I never imagined I would one day buy it."
The house was another that had escaped 150 years of remodeling. Amazing, but virtually nothing had been changed since the time indoor plumbing was added. The first owner, a staircase builder in the city, would probably feel right at home--once the years of dust had been swept away.
Carlton had collected Real Estate guides for years, chronicling San Francisco's collection of houses. He would know when they were built, when they last sold, and even if they had survived the 1906 earthquake. In his final days, he would roam around San Francisco's streets in a wheelchair, pushed by a tiring volunteer, taking pictures of his favorite houses and admiring each for its own unique charms.
Carlton's gift to these two cities was not only in the houses he helped save. His gift was his sincere and outreaching interest in the neighborhoods and people around him. Never one to miss a community meeting, always ready to initiate projects that would make the neighborhood a better place, Carlton was at least partly responsible for building more attractive fences, planting trees, keeping traffic lanes from being added, and keeping the streets clean.
Many of his neighbors in San Francisco were impressed by his willingness to spend his own money to buy potted plants to put in front of neighbors' houses. On several occasions he even walked up and down the street inviting neighbors he barely knew to a social gathering. Carlton was the kind of citizen the world needs more of. He had a compelling interest in cities, how they worked as vehicles to pass along history from generation to generation, and their role as organisms to bring people together as a community of neighbors. We will miss him.
Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.
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