The view looking up Doyers Street from Chatham Square, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
The view in 2014:
Doyers Street is a narrow, crooked street in the middle of Chinatown that, around the time that the first photo was taken, began to acquire the nickname of “the Bloody Angle” for the number of Chinese gang-related shootings that occurred throughout the first part of the 20th century. The “Chinese Tuxedo” signs in the first photo are for a high-end Chinese restaurant that catered to American tastes. Kind of like an early 20th century P.F. Chang’s, with some gang violence added into the atmosphere.