When I came to
town in the early '70s, downtown Napa struck me as very Back
East. It reminded me of the old downtowns I had known as a kid
growing up around Boston and New York.
With its funky
bars, flophouses, pawn shop and Army-Navy store, it certainly
didn't look anything like the new California towns springing
up elsewhere.
I had arrived before the wrecking ball of
redevelopment, before Napa Creek by Main Street was uncovered,
before pockets of open space were opened up on the
river.
Of the businesses of that era, none was more
exotic than the Sam Kee Laundry, located in Napa's oldest
commercial building at Main and Clinton. It was a genuine
Chinese laundry run by immigrants Bik Wong, his wife Yuk and
his mother-in-law, also named Yuk.
Stepping through the
stone portal of the Sam Kee, erected in 1875, was to go back
100 years to pioneer times when Napa had a Chinatown on the
river and families lived in the businesses where they
worked.
The Wongs and their five young daughters lived
upstairs in a warren of tiny room. Downstairs, a dark, steamy
industrial work zone doubled as the family's living room.
Customers stepped around the children's toys.
By the
1970s, the laundry had fallen on hard times. Napa homes had
their own washers and dryers. Shopping centers had
Laundromats. A Chinese laundry had become an
anachronism.
When I visited in fall of 1976, Bik Wong,
speaking in broken English, complained that his boiler had
broken and it had taken a week to get it fixed. During that
time, the dirty laundry had piled up.
He knew his days
in the laundry business were fading. The future lay with his
Americanized daughters who watched "Wonder Woman" on TV and
knew their ABCs even as preschoolers.
Not long after,
the laundry closed. The building was renovated, becoming
Andrews Meat Market and Deli, a use more in sync with the
times.
Two decades later, the stone structure has
changed uses yet again. Now it houses the Vintner's
Collective, the wine tasting and sales room for 10 of the Napa
Valley's most esteemed winemakers. Most of their artisanal
wines sell for $30 and up.
Last week I paid a visit,
again walking through the stone portal I had cross in Sam Kee
days. Memories of the Wongs' family sweat shop collided with
images of 21st century wine chic.
Cool music filled the
first floor, which had been stripped to its architectural
essence, then outfitted with white walls, a walnut bar, a
stunning mahogany wine case, copper ceiling panels and a
loaned piece of modern art from the di Rosa Art
Preserve.
Owner Garret Murphy has brought the wine
sophistication of the Upvalley into downtown Napa, creating a
tasting temple to the art of winemaking.
To anyone who
remembers Napa of 30 years ago, or even the 1990s when
downtown was fumbling for a new identity and a commercial
reason to exist, this is a mind-blowing
development.
Boutique wineries! Downtown Napa! In the
Sam Kee no less!
In a strange twist of fate, the
Vintner's Collective represents a return to the building's
alcohol roots.
Using hand-cut stone, Bavarian immigrant
Philip Pfeiffer built the structure in 1875 for a brewery. In
those early years, a beer wagon rumbled through town making
deliveries.
Murphy, a Frenchman, doesn't have a wine
wagon, but he offers tastes of hard-to-find wines, three for
$5.
He delights in occupying a National Register
building with thick stone walls that have a roughness and
variation in color that put stucco to shame.
"Very few
buildings in Napa have this gorgeous feel to it," said Murphy,
who invites anyone to come in simply to caress the
stones.
Murphy showed off the upstairs. Those small
room where the Wongs lived in the '70s probably dated back to
the early 1900s when the place was a brothel, he
said.
Today all the partitions are gone. Murphy has
created airy expanse for wine events.
We walked out
onto the second-story balcony with views of downtown. Murphy
pointed out the new developments that give him hope that the
Vintner's Collective will fit in downtown's future.
To
the east, Copia and Wine Train. To the south, Cole's Chop
House and the Napa Valley Opera House.
He does not
mention his more immediate neighbors, the Salvation Army
Thrift Store just up the street or the low-income apartments
across the way.
In Murphy's vision for downtown, they
do not exist.
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