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Tom Ralston Concrete was honored to be able to work on the monument for the City of Santa Cruz with Chinese philanthropist George Ow. Tom was interviewed for a documentary on the Chinatown Bridge on Inside Santa Cruz after the work was completed. In this episode, Inside Santa Cruz documents the inspiration, design, and construction of the Chinatown Bridge Dragon Gate Monument over San Lorenzo River, and discusses the history of Santa Cruz's Chinatowns.
In the documentary, George Ow introduces Tom saying, "Tom Ralston is a master cement artisan and artist. He wrote the book on fancy cement and we get the benefit of three generations of experience and knowledge. Tom and I have worked on a previous Chinese gate over at Evergreen Cemetery, and we had so much fun with that we decided to do one here."
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The project will include new stairs as well as a stainless-steel railing and is projected to be completed in about two weeks. Tom Ralston Concrete is a third-generation Santa Cruz County concrete company founded by Wilbur Thomas Ralston in 1928. A 2011 inductee to the Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame, Tom Ralston has been working in the concrete industry since 1964 and took over the company when his father Jim retired in 1989. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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The Decorative Concrete Council (DCC), a specialty council of the American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC), St. Louis, Mo., has announced the winners of its 13th annual Decorative Concrete Awards competition. The winners were recognized at ASCC’s Annual Conference, September 23, 2021.
Tom Ralston Concrete's Chinatown Arch was awared 2nd place for the Decorative Concrete Council Award : Multiple Applications, Under 5,000 SF.
Good Times Magazine called the arch "One of the 50 best things created in Santa Cruz during COVID."
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Santa Cruzans love our local history. Now there’s a beautiful art piece connecting us to our past, right by the river. The Santa Cruz City Council formally named the pedestrian bridge from San Lorenzo Park to the Galleria and Trader Joe’s as Santa Cruz’s “Chinatown Bridge” in 2019 and now a non-traditional Chinese style gate and twenty-three foot water dragon, covered in colorful mosaic tile, adorn this bridge spanning the San Lorenzo River.
CWC led the effort because the artwork will beautify the Santa Cruz Riverwalk, the longest city park in Santa Cruz and because relearning or remembering river history is important. There’s an important chapter in the river’s story that’s been forgotten, that of Chinese immigrants living in Santa Cruz who faced severe discrimination, both informally and in the form of racist legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. And yet, they significantly shaped this city, our region and the state of California. This bridge, this art, honors them, remembers them and recognizes their contributions.
George Ow, Jr., with Ow Family Properties, was the main funder of the work and Ow shaped all aspects of the work. Ow grew up in Chinatown, staying with his grandmother, who lived there. Tom Ralston of Tom Ralston Concrete designed and crafted the stunning yellow gate, atop which sits the water dragon, designed, built and decorated by community artist and art educator Kathleen Crocetti, aka “dragon maker.”
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Tom Ralston (center), president of Tom Ralston Concrete share a celebratory moment with Watsonville artist Kathleen Crocetti (right) and her husband and engineer, Bill Lucas, Sunday during the installation of a large mosaic dragon on the San Lorenzo footbridge on Front Street in Santa Cruz. — Tarmo Hannula/The PajaronianAs a crane hoisted four sections of a large mosaic-covered water dragon into place Sunday atop a colorful concrete gateway at an entryway to San Lorenzo Park, new life was pumped into a forgotten chapter of Santa Cruz history.
Renamed the Chinatown Bridge by the Santa Cruz City Council in 2019, the dragon archway, stationed at the Front Street entrance to the popular pedestrian and bike bridge that crosses the San Lorenzo River, was created to recognize and honor the final Chinatown in Santa Cruz that once thrived in what is now San Lorenzo Park.
“I think it looks fabulous,” said George Ow Jr., a major supporter of the project who said he lived in Chinatown as a young boy with his family. “I can hardly take my eyes off it. So many thanks to artist Kathleen Crocetti and concrete artist Tom Ralston. He wrote the book on artistic concrete work. This is truly a great way to show off their talents.”
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Santa Cruz bronze artist Sean Monaghan and concrete virtuoso Tom Ralston install solar-powered bronze lanterns that Monaghan hand-crafted in his Santa Cruz foundry on the “Chinese Arch” at the entrance to the pedestrian bridge over the San Lorenzo River connecting San Lorenzo Park and River Street. A community-driven effort to commemorate the city’s historic Chinese neighborhoods, and actualized by Ralston, Monaghan and mosaic artist Kathleen Croscetti. The arch will honor the city’s Chinatown neighborhood which stood until the middle of the last century on the site where DNA’s Comedy Lab and the Galleria now stand. The project is in part a vision realized with the help of local businessman and philanthropist George Ow Jr., who lived his earliest years, from 1943 to 1948, in the last of Santa Cruz’s four former Chinatown neighborhoods before it was destroyed by flooding in 1955. A mosaic-covered concrete dragon will be installed atop the arch Sunday morning. Ow and Ralston also were behind the creation of a commemorative monument honoring deceased Chinese residents which stands at Evergreen Cemetery. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)