SEATTLE — There’s a new effort to preserve history in Seattle’s Chinatown-International district. The Wing Luke Museum just acquired one of the neighborhood's last remaining single-family homes located near Canton Alley.
A step back in time, to ensure history is preserved for the future.
"We wanted this house to be a part of history, and for our family's history to be known and the Eng clan to be known,” said 89-year-old Tuck Eng, who gave KING 5 a tour of his family home on Wednesday.
The property is located in Seattle’s Chinatown International District off Weller and 8th. The small home consists of three bedrooms, one bathroom and a basement where his family’s bean sprout business was run out of. It was built by Eng's father back in 1937.
"I don't know how they got by it, but my brother who was eight years old was assigned as the owner of the house, because my dad was a foreigner, and he could not own property," said Eng.
For the last 80 years, it has housed three generations of Eng families. It is one of the neighborhood's last remaining single-family homes. Now, Eng believes it's time for someone else to take over.
"Turn this house as a homestead and we wanted the Wing Luke Museum to manage it," said Eng.
Staff with the museum say the plan is to start restoring the property over the next year. It will use the property as an immersive educational exhibit as part of the Wing's walking tour, and a cultural heritage and educational space.
"With this, is to inspire community-led and directed development,” said Joël Barraquiel Tan, the executive director of the Wing Luke Museum. “The way that the museum and projects like this speak to the way that arts and culture work as a healing resource."
The museum plans on opening it to the public late next year. Eng hopes it will remind people to embrace who they are, and not to forget where they came from. "We had a lot of experiences here growing up, a lot of fun, a lot of problems, but we survived."