Haberdasher Bill Simons learned about many of Boise’s old buildings from the corner of 9th and Main, where Moses Alexander built Idaho’s grandest men’s store. Simons, Alexander’s great-grandson, saw the value of buildings that many Boiseans wanted destroyed and took special interest in the Chinese storefronts slated for destruction by urban renewal to make way for a shopping mall. His photographs from the 1960s show the final days of Boise’s second Chinatown, a laundry and restaurant district founded in 1901.
          The story begins with immigrant miners from China’s Guangdong Province who cross through Boise soon after gold was discovered near Idaho City in 1862. By the 1880s, many had settled in Boise along Idaho Street, creating the largest Chinatown in the intermountain area. In 1901, after the city condemned many fire-prone wooden buildings, a second Chinatown spread east from 8th Street along Front and Grove.