SIMON FIELDHOUSE
ARTIST
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SIMON FIELDHOUSE ARTIST
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THE BUND" - SHANGHAI HISTORIC ARCHITECTURE
No. 1 The Mc Bain Building was better known in old Shanghai as the Shell or Asiatic Petroleum Company Building. The Shell International Petroleum Company which was established in Shanghai in 1907 continued to operate in the building up until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
No. 2 The
Shanghai Club Building
was a three-storey
neo-classical building
in
Shanghai along
The Bund. The
structure is now empty. The original Shanghai Club was a three-storey red-brick
building constructed the
British in
1861. The club
was rebuilt in
1905.
The club was a
British
men's club and
was the most exclusive club in Shanghai during the heyday of the 1920s
The second-floor was
famous for the "Long Bar." This was an unpolished
mahogany,
L-shaped bar that
No. 3. The
Union Building
is a building on
the Bund
in
Shanghai,
China.
It is located at No. 3, the Bund
In
1937,
the
Japanese Imperial Army
threatened
Shanghai.
Being unable to indemnify war damages, the
No. 5 The
NKK
Building
No.6 The Russell & Co. Building Although the opening of Dolce & Gabbana’s flagship store in July 2006 at No. 6, or 6 Bund as it is now known, marked a new chapter in the building’s history, its past still remains shrouded in a lacy veil of mystery. Acknowledged as one of the oldest buildings on the Bund, it is generally documented as being built in 1897 as premises for either the Imperial Bank of China or the Commercial Bank of China. It is actually the case that the Imperial Bank of China, which was later to become the Commercial Bank of China, opened its doors there in May 1897. However, the building itself was completed many years earlier than is generally realised as the new premises for Russell & Co., one of the most illustrious American companies to operate in China in the 19th century. Photographic evidence shows that the building, which was described as new, was there in 1886; whilst the American scholar Eric Politzer dates the building back to 1881. Indeed, it was in that year that the company first appeared as occupying No. 6 The Bund in a locally published Shanghai directory.
Another financial institution, the P & 0 Banking Corporation, occupied the building for most of the 1920s and 1930s. They temporarily vacated their premises in 1936 and 1937 to allow extensive renovation work to take place on the building—inside and out. As part of the scheme, its red brick face, which had become unfashionable in a period of Art Deco inspired modernism, was smothered with a plain coating. Today, no interior trace is left of its Victorian heritage or of its 1930s makeover and the building’s exterior has a brand-new icing cake finish. At today’s 6 Bund, the upper three floors of the building are devoted to fine cuisine and high living.
No. 7. The Great Northern Telegraph Company Building. A large fire in October 1905, atop the new offices being built for Shanghai’s first provider of telegraphs and telephones, took over two hours to extinguish and delayed the completion of the building for a whole year. The roof collapsed and the entire third floor and attic had to be rebuilt. The building, which eventually opened in January 1908, also housed the offices of the British owned Eastern Extension and the American owned Commercial Cable telegraph companies. Originally there were three Bund entrances leading to the respective company offices. The Great Northern Telegraphy Company, a Danish concern, had laid a line to Beijing in the early 1880s and had completed the one to Nagasaki before the new offices opened. he building, in Renaissance style, designed by Atkinson & Dallas, housed some stare-of-the art equipment, including a pneumatic tube system to handle the telegrams and a lift made by Smith & Stevens of London. Public telephones were found in abundance in the ground floor hall. The Great Northern Telegraphy Company occupied the first floor, and most of the Bund frontage was given over to a series of fine suites for its manager, engineer and accountant. The flags of the three nations present in the building used to fly above the building before the telegraph offices were moved to a new building in East Yan’an Road, behind No. 1 The Bund, at the end of 1921. In the following year the Commercial Bank of China, which was previously next door at No. 6, moved its business into the building. The Bangkok Bank took over part of the premises in 1995 and, as in days gone by when numerous consulates occupied the Bund’s buildings, the Royal Thai Consulate-General also took up residence.
No. 9 The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company Building The history of this building is inextricably linked with that of the former Russell & Co. Building at No. 6 The Bund (see page 122). The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, the first Chinese company to establish itself on the Bund, had occupied the site of No. 9 and the so-called Stone House buildings to the rear on Fuzhou Road since 1885. The present red brick building, designed by Atkinson & Dallas, was opened in 1901. The company, which was taken over by the Nationalist government in 1928, was again reorganised in the early 1930s in an effort to improve its efficiency and to stamp out corruption. In a dramatic incident, its general manager, Mr. C. T. Chao, was shot dead in broad daylight by two Chinese assassins at the steps of the building in July 1930. By that time, the Stone House buildings had fallen into such a state of dangerous ill- repair that plans, which were never to materialise, were laid for the reconstruction of the entire site. The China Merchants shipping fleet again obtained protection under the American flag in 1937 when William P. Hunt and Co. took a majority stake in the company, in order, as it turned out temporarily, to circumvent its seizure by Japanese interests. Hunt’s leased the building out to the Deh Lee Trading Company in September 1939. The building is once again flying the flag as the fashions on display in Shiatzy Chen’s flagship store, which opened in October 2005. exhibit a distinctively Chinese heritage amidst the parade of Western fashion marques that now dominate the Bond. The building’s Chinese pedigree made it an obvious location for Ms. Shiatzy Chen’s ambition to create a strong Chinese presence on the Bund. China Merchant Holdings, which had been back in charge of the building since 2001, were fully in accord with her ethos. Work on restoring the original, red brick exterior look and on converting offices into a modern and artistic showplace for Shiatzy Chen’s exquisite creations began in late 2001. The interior was fashioned by the renowned Indonesian designer Jaya Ibrahim. Launched. in 1978, ShiatzyChen has 40 stores in her native land, opened her first store in Paris in 2001, the first in Shanghai in 2003, and plans to have 50 mainland outlets by 2010. Three smaller, independent outlets, housed in the old Stone House buildings to the rear of the building, also parade Chinese inspiration in the form of fine handcrafted porcelain, modern Chinese art and skilfully hand-embroidered footwear.
No. 12 The HSBC Building
The HSBC Building has been called ‘the most
luxurious building from the Suez Canal to the Bering Strait”.
No. 14 The Bank of Communications Building The original premises occupied by the Bank of Communications on the Bund had been built in 1902 for the German Asiatic Bank by Heinrich Becker, who also designed the Russo-Chinese Bank next door. Following the denial of German extraterritorial rights in l91? The bank was closed in August of that year and forced into liquidation by the Nationalist government. A. C. Stephen of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was entrusted with overseeing the dissolution of the institution. The Bank of Communications moved in on 25 th February 1920. The second and third floors of their new four story, Italian neo-Renaissance style building had been formerly let out as luxurious apartments. The Bank of Communications, one of China’s oldest banking institutions dating from 1908, was created by a special charter allowing it to handle all revenues from the railroads, posts and telegraphs, as well as the administration of ocean and river navigation. A further charter was granted by the Republican government in 1914 that permitted it to deal in government bond issues and treasury notes. Whilst work on rebuilding the bank was underway in 1948, a safe, dating back to the years of its original German occupants, was found hidden deep in its walls. Despite speculation that it contained secret German documents or a hoard of gold and gems nothing of interest was brought to light. The building’s architect, C. H. Gonda, who put together designs for the building 11 years earlier, had revolutionized the appearance of bank buildings in Shanghai with his modernist design for the Bank of East Asia on nearby Central Sichuan Road in 1928.
No. 15 The Russo-Chinese Bank The opening of the Russo-Chinese Bank on 26” October 1902 caused quite a stir amongst Shanghai’s foreign community, many of whom thought it looked totally our of place on the Bund. As it turned out the building was to set the trend for modern European style buildings which would later emerge along the entire waterfront. Heinrich Becker, who had studied in Munich, came to Shanghai in 1899 where he won the open competition for the design of the bank. His design in Italian Renaissance style, using natural stone, was very much in vogue for prestigious European bank buildings of the era. Becker was assisted in the project by British architect Richard Seel, who had previously designed the Government Buildings in Tokyo. Despite some claims that the building was by Becker & Baedeker, including that on the heritage plaque outside, Becker didn’t enter into partnership with Mr. C. Baedeker until 1905. The building was successfully completed within two years in spite of numerous hindrances, including the desertion of numerous artisans and labourers during the tumultuous Boxer uprising of 1900. The building was quite revolutionary in terms of technical sophistication and artistic interpretation. The bank had its own electric generator and, apart from being the first building in China to be equipped with an elevator, it was fully heated with hot air pipes and every single desk was served by two electric fans and two electric lights. Inside the building a beautifully decorated central hall extended through the three-storey structure which was accessed by way of an intricately carved, grand marble staircase. On the interior walls there were sculptures of iron smelting, agriculture, coal-mining and textile manufacture, as well as of tea, cotton, shipping and electricity. On the third floor two handsome apartments for the managers opened onto the stone veranda and magnificent stained glass ran around the hallway. Thankfully, much of the original internal decoration still survives though, as the building houses the Shanghai Gold Exchange, it remains well hidden from public view. However, all the outside adornment, including two groups of statues representing industry and commerce and three masks depicting a Chinese flanked by two Russians on keystones above the ground floor windows, has been lost. The building today provides one of the best illustrations on the Bund of the settling process. There are now two steps down, rather than up, to the entrance hall. An SMC engineer noted in 1923 that this building in particular had ‘subsided to a considerable degree,’ but went on to note that the pavement level was also much higher than it was when the building was constructed. When it was first established in Shanghai in 1896, the Russo- Chinese Bank had just five European clerks. When its new building opened its Dutch manager, Michael Speelman, one of only two Dutchmen resident in Shanghai at that time, had charge of over 50 clerks. A new innovation for the bank was the installation, on the ground floor, of 300 safe-deposit boxes for its customers. The Russo-Chinese Bank established the Chinese Eastern Railroad Company and was amalgamated with the Banque du Nord in 1901. It later became the Russo-Asiatic Bank and in 1925, at the time of its liquidation, its property deeds were handed ovcr to the Chinese Maritime Customs who held an extensive credit balance with the institution. A deal was made in 1928 and the Central Bank of China took over the property, with H. H. Kung, later to become the Nationalist Governmeht Minister of Finance, as governor. The building also housed the office of Thomas Cook, travel agents, who had established their first office in China at Shanghai in 1910. The patriarch of the family firm wasn’t too impressed by the native elements of the city when he paid a visit on his first round-the-world tour in 1873. The two, really out of place, Art Deco, three storey block buildings, which still survive to the south of the main building, were erected in 1930 primarily to provide storage for silver which couldn’t be accommodated in the bank’s existing vaults. However, much of the silver was shipped abroad when the bank was evacuated during the Sino-Japanese hostilities of 1937. Directly after the evacuation the bank was temporarily used as the offices for the Russian Regiment of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps—a salaried detachment of Shanghai’s long established volunteer militia. In 1938, the building provided classrooms for Chinese students from the Ellis Kadoorie School and the Nieh Chih Kuei Public School which had been forced to relocate because of local hostilities. The new Central Bank of China, under the control of the puppet government in Nanjing, took over the premises in November 1940. In one of the outbuildings, and again looking out of place in its posh neighbourhood setting, the small Three Gun store, a state-run enterprise parading a selection of old-fashioned knitted undergarments, looks as though it has been there for time immemorial. It only took up residence, however, in 1993 and chose the spot purely on commercial grounds. The Three Gun brand was originally established in Shanghai in 1937 by Gan Tinghui in response to the Japanese aggression which had resulted in a boycott of Japanese goods in the city. He combatively named his company following three consecutive successes he had scored in shooting competitions. In 1966, the company, among others, was incorporated into the Number 9 Knitted Garment Factory of Shanghai. The Three Gun brand was resurrected in the period of reform following the death of Mao Zedong in 1977 and in 2005, as one of China’s largest producers of undergarments, it gained the sole rights to produce and sell children’s clothes for the Disney brand. Adjoining the shop are two even smaller spaces housing ATMs for HSBC and the Bank of East Asia—two mammoth banking institutions which now only have a token presence on the waterfront.
No. 16 The Bank of Taiwan Today, apart from the intricate marble balustrades on the mezzanine floor, the original marble in the banking hall has been replaced. Presumably the original marble survived only on account of the expense or the difficulty of recreating it. The two floors above the main banking hall were originally rented out, whilst the top floor provided living quarters and recreational rooms for bank staff. Scars on the Japanese granite face of this neo-Crecian building tell of the harsh treatment it received at the hands of workers whilst ‘restoring’ the surface in 1997.
No. 17 The North China Daily News Building The new building for the North China Daily News was formally opened in February 1924 to commemorate the diamond jubilee of a newspaper that had begun life as a weekly broadsheet, the North China Herald, in 1850 prior to becoming a daily publication in 1864. Its proprietorship had been in the hands of the Morris family, British Catholics of Jewish descent, since 1880 when Henry Morris took a controlling interest in the business following his marriage to Una Pickwood, the daughter of a former proprietor. Henry, who had a great passion for horses, set himself up as a successful bill broker after his arrival in Shanghai from Bombay in 1866. He also accumulated large areas of land in the city, including a large estate to the south of the racecourse (today’s People’s Square) which became known as Morris Village or Morrisville. Appositely, his death at the age of 76 in 1911 was attributed to a riding accident a year earlier. Henry senior’s passion for horses was adopted by his son, Henry junior, also known as Harry, chairman of the company when the new building opened, and whose horse Manna was the winner of both the Two Thousand Guineas and the English Derby in 1925. enthusiast and used to walk his dogs from his substantial estate, today’s Ruijin Guest House, to the Canidrome Dog Track next door. Gordon, another of Henry’s sons, was also a director of the paper, as well as a partner in the company that erected the new offices. It wasn’t until 1901 that all the papers’ offices and presses were moved to the present site on the Bund. At one point, the residents of the Chartered Bank next door obtained a court injunction to stop the hammering noise of the presses’ engines that were keeping them awake at nights. The new building was especially designed in two sections with a rear part, where the presses were placed in the basement, separated from the front part by a hollow wall. The first papers would be gathered from the presses at three in the morning. On the top floor, two luxury flats provided the highest habitable spaces in the city, and the paper’s editorial offices were located on the fifth floor. For most British in the city life without the Far East’s leading British newspaper and bastion of Empire would have proved unthinkable. t was Asia’s empire builders who were to put a temporary end to the illusion. A local Japanese newspaper, the Tairuko Shimpo, remodelled the building and installed their own machinery inside after they took possession in December 1941. However, within a week of the end of the Pacific War, on 21” August 1945, former employees R. W. Davis, the paper’s secretary and manager, and assistants Haslam and Yung, who had all been inmates at the Japanese internment camp in Pudong, walked in and demanded their building back. At first they feared that the newspaper’s valuable and voluminous archives had been lost as they were nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, a representative from Jardine, Matheson & Co. phoned from down the Bund to inform them that they were safe in their offices. They were scheduled to have been sent to Tokyo. The newspaper’s furniture and equipment was later found scattered all over Shanghai. Remarkably, ‘The Old Grandmother or Lady of the Bund,’ as she was affectionately known, continued publication after 1949 and was only closed down on 31 March 1951 following its coverage of the Korean War. Another great institution, the American Asiatic Underwriters (AAU), brainchild of a young American, Cornelius Vander Starr, occupied many floors of the building after 1927. Starr, who established the company in Shanghai in 1919, was to build up the largest insurance empire in Asia, the forerunner of today’s leading global insurance company, AIG (American International Group, Inc.). Apart from his insurance interests Starr had a massive hand in Shanghai’s realty business and was the owner of Shanghai’s only American daily newspaper, the Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury. Like those of the North China Daily News, the offices of AIG’s & rerunner were opened within a week of the end of the Pacific War and, although closed in 1950, they made a grand comeback almost half a century later in 1998.
No. 18 The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was the oldest of the foreign banks in Shanghai. It was established in 1853 and opened its first branch in Shanghai in 1857. Three earlier banks— the Oriental, the Chartered Mercantile and the Agra were to flounder. The site on which the building stands was purchased from the Oriental Bank in 1893. Lions’ heads on sandstone bronze lamp brackets, emblematic of the British nationality of the bank, once adorned each side of the entrance gates. Floral motifs from the surviving English made bronze gates, which despite their Creek detailing had an Oriental feel, were used in the banking hall. Originally, carved keystones, representing India, Australia and China, incorporating rams’ heads were set over the ground floor windows. The entrance
vestibule featured four Brecchia marble columns, and the walls were lined with a
rich, cream colored, Iust over 80 years later, in 2004, the building reopened to great acclaim as Bund 18. Its Taiwanese developers had spent considerable effort in restoring as much as possible of the original architectural vision, besides incorporating harmonious modern addtions to satisfy pesenr day needs. The entrance and banking hall now plays host to a range of luxury emporia, including Cartier and Zegna. Zegna’s new headquarters are found on the third floor. The upper floors house the Bund 18 Creative Centre, the Tan Wai Lou Chinese Restaurant, and Sens Sc Bund with its rooftop Bar Rouge. Sens Sc Bund is managed by the Michelin 3 star rated Pourcel brothers and Bar Rouge has evolved as the choicest of night-time destinations. The restoration was presided over by Pilippo Gabbiani of Kokaistudios. Mr. Gabbiani’s family, themselves distinguished traditional glass makers, bought Marco Polo’s former house in Venice when he was just eight and, from that day on, China was his dream. Filippo fell in love with China on his first visit in 1991. He had his first experience of architectural restoration work at the age of 19. His work on Bund 18, alongside four of his staff, started in 2002 with an intensive three month critical survey of the building. The restoration phase took one year, during which the Chinese staff were trained in restoration techniques that had long been forgotten. Work went on day after day, 24 hours a day, with the project proving to be one of the most challenging Mr. Gabbiani had ever undertaken. He ensured that no attempt was made to reproduce or imitate the old design features and style if they could not be restored. ‘For me it is important that you leave the fingerprint of what you did in a very readable way—so in the future people can be able to recognise what is original and what was added when and how.’ His work, and that of his team, was rewarded with Bund 18 winning the Award of Excellence in the 2006 UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Awards.
No. 19 The Palace Hotel The Central Stores Company, which was largely financed by Edward Ezra, a representative of one of the three great Sephardic Jewish families that were to dominate the hotel scene in Shanghai, took over the Central Hotel on the southern corner of Nanjing Road and the Bund in 1896. Despite a sharp increase in tariffs, guests were still being turned away and plans for replacing it with the much larger and modern Palace Hotel were drawn up in 1904. The work was to be undertaken in two stages with scheduled completion dates in 1906 and 1908. Building began on the first section of the hotel in late 1904, with its cornerstone being laid by the chairman of the Municipal Council, Mr. F. Anderson, on 21 January 1905. The project, however, was blighted with construction problems from its outset and the western section of the hotel, which was due to be completed in October 1906, wasn’t actually opened until April 1907. As soon as the first section was completed, the old Central Hotel was pulled down and work on building the front part of the hotel facing the Bund began in August 1907. Again, building work was slower than expected and, with a fire on the roof in December that year the company had to resort to buying another property a mile away to keep up with the rapidly expanding demand for hotel rooms. Despite the surviving 1906 inscription over the main entrance, the whole building wasn’t fully completed until October 1909. However, the fourth and fifth floors of the front section were opened on 1” February 1909 in time for the landmark meeting of the International Opium Commission, an event that is commemorated by a plaque outside the hotel today. As soon as the hotel was completed, its architects, Messrs. Scott & Carter, came under intense criticism from Moorhead and Raise, architects, in a 23-page report detailing their failures in providing proper plans and guidance for the contractors. The death of Mr. Carter, during the course of its construction, wasn’t given any consideration. The building was seen as something of a ‘house that Jack built,’ as the settling process had left walls, windows and doors askew, and the ‘general finish of the bedrooms was the worst we have yet seen in Shanghai in a building of any pretensions. The architects placed a strong accent on color and rendered the building in their locally interpreted ‘Victorian Renaissance’ design. Most of the ground floor was originally taken over by shops, whilst the whole of the top floor accommodated a dining room, which could seat 300 people, and a 200-seat banqueting hall, which had access to the roof garden. The hotel had its own foreign-managed dairy farm and cultivated a large kitchen garden to supply its fruit and vegetables. In line with its attempt at architectural bravura, the early years of the Palace Hotel were beleaguered by management problems, and yet another fire in August 1912 destroyed the hotel’s signature roof towers. They were only recreated in 1998. Apart from poor management, overpriced facilities and complaints over the quality of the food, the Palace gained a macabre reputation following a series of guest suicides. For some new arrivals the pressure of finding their feet in Shanghai society proved too much. Things began to turn around for the hotel when the Central It Stores was reformed as The Shanghai Hotels Ltd. in 1917. Net income more than doubled over the 1918—1920 period and the hotel was again turning hordes of would-be guests away. With the formation of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. in 1923 plans were set, at an indefinite future date, to replace the Palace Hotel with a more modern structure. However, in the meantime, the whole of the ground floor of the hotel was vacated of its shops and the company set about a major remodelling of the hotel, with Palmer and Turner presiding over the job. A few years later Tug Wilson remarked that the Palace Hotel ‘was never a thing of beauty, butit is to be hoped that it will soon give way to something better. The highly successful Palace Hotel Tea Lounge, occupying the Nanjing Road frontage left of the lobby, was opened in 1925. It was partnered, in 192 by an Italian-style grill room, with an orchestra shell between the two allowing after-dinner dances in the tea lounge. The grill-room was separated from the tea room by silk portieres lit by multicolored lights which remain to this day. To the right of the main lobby, a soda fountain leading into a wood- panelled snack restaurant and a Jacobean-style bar was opened in 1926. New bronze and glass windows were installed, peaked by a canopy of the same materials extending along the entire Nanjing Road frontage. The changes dramatically increased the hotel’s profitability. During the 1930s the Palace Hotel Tea Lounge. Meanwhile, the grill room had adopted a Russian flavor with the appointment of C. Podbelsky, late of the Astoria Hotel, St. Petersburg, and the Hotel de France in Moscow. His famed dishes included Kiev cutlets, Ceorgian meat orders and the most famous Russian soups. Whilst all was well on the culinary front, the building itself was feeling the effects of age, and suffering at the hands of modern skyscraper luxury hotels, namely the neighbouring Cathay Hotel and the Park Hotel on today’s People’s Square. Hotel rates were cut and plans were again laid to demolish and rebuild the hotel in 1939. However the uncertainty brought about by the events in 1937 resulted in a full renovation of the guest rooms instead. Further renovations took place after the Japanese vacated the hotel in 1945, and the top two floors of the hotel were requisitioned by the American Navy, who stayed until October 1946. Perhaps the Palace’s most inconspicuous military guests were troops from the People’s Liberation Army who were billeted at the hotel in May 1949. The commander of the several hundred troops first asked if they could be given rooms at half price. The manager agreed to this, and then the PLA officer explained that the soldiers were not used to such luxurious surroundings and asked if it would be too much trouble to remove the furniture from the rooms. Finally, the troop commander said that perhaps some of the hotel’s permanent guests, particularly foreigners, might be upset to see a lot of soldiers coming in and out and asked whether arrangements could be made for his men to use the back door. The China Weekly Review reported that ‘the persons working in the hotel say you would never know the soldiers were living there. The quiet Communist revolutionaries closed the door on Nationalist Party rule in China that had been celebrated in the very same building on 29” December 1911 when Dr. Sun Year-end entertained over 100 of his boisterous revolutionary followers after his election as President of the Republic of China. In recent years a number of potential investors have been eyeing the building, used as the south wing of the Peace Hotel, with a view to revolutionizing its use yet again.
No 23 The Bank of China The Bank of China had occupied the former premises of the Club Concordia, or German Club, for over 12 years before they decided to build a new one on the site. With China’s announcement of war with Germany diplomatic ties between the two countries were severed and German extraterritorial rights were renounced in March 191. The life of the gingerbread-like club building, which had long been a playground for Anglo Saxon camaraderie, where nationality was a matter of circumstance, came to an abrupt end on the sunny afternoon of 17 August 1917. Just before 5.00 p.m. a posse from the Shanghai Municipal Police, under the charge of Captain Edward Ivo Medhurst Barrett, surrounded the building. Irish-born Inspector Bourke and Mr. S. K. Chen from the Bureau of Foreign Affairs entered the club to inform its members that it was time to drink up for the last time. The Germans were allowed to finish their last drink in peace and one requested that the Inspector join them for old time’s sake. He was reported to have replied that ‘I’ve had many a one with you at the Recreation Club, and it’s my sincere hope that we’ll have more together when this damned war is over, but today, excuse me, for I’m on duty and if it was reported that I’d had a drink with you, I’d be sure to get into trouble.’ The Germans shook the hand of the officer in understanding, drank up and burst into an impromptu rendition of Deutschland, Deutschland as they abandoned their past haunt. The club’s residents were allowed a further eight days to vacate the building. Despite its new Chinese ownership, some of the foreign community made calls for it to be reopened as some form of club, perhaps for the enjoyment of the Allies, or as a cultural centre. Others pointed out that Shanghai was primarily a place for making money rather than merrymaking and that the building should be put to commercial use. In the end, the Bank of China took over control of the property in 1920, and, following extensive renovations, opened their offices there on the 20 February 1912. They also erected a new building, next door on Dianchi Road, which was used as a vault capable of storing 80 million dollars worth of silver. Atkinson & Dallas presided over the building work. The Club Concordia was founded in 1865 and work on its new Bund premises, to the designs of Heinrich Becker, began in 1904. Unlike the Shanghai Club, the palatial Club Concordia, which opened in February 1900 was not averse to boisterous entertainment on its premises. Initiated in 1910, the club’s annual masquerade ball soon became the greatest event in Shanghai’s social calendar. The club found its way into the record books in 1913 when a capaciry crowd of 1,000 party going masqueraders consumed 1,011 bottles of champagne. The Bank of China had little to celebrate over its attempt to get into the record books. The definition and execution of the plans for one of the Far East’s most costly and ambitious buildings were to be fraught with difficulties. By late 1934 initial plans to build a 33 story, 380-foot skyscraper, 11 storys higher than the monumental Park Hotel which had just been completed, were scrapped. A new scheme, featuring twin towers reaching up 24 storys on the Bund and 26 storys on Dianchi Road, was proposed but in the end a building of much more modest stature actually materialised. Even though the completed building was 17 storys high, it still fell one foot short of Sassoon House next door. The precise reasons for the drastic reduction in the building’s height remain shrouded in mystery. It is still popularly believed that Sir Victor Sassoon had a large part to play in dwarfing the Nationalist government’s landmark edifice. The Peace Hotel, the present occupiers of part of the old Sassoon House, even retold the story in a 2004 edition of their newsletter. They quoted ‘Crippled Sassoon’ as saying ‘here is the British Concession and any house built next to my building is not allowed to be higher.’ The story goes on to say that the SMC refused the building’s plans on technical grounds as they would have caused damage to the neighboring buildings. Sassoon, albeit indirectly, certainly had influence within the upper realms of governance in the form of H. E. Arnhold, a director of his Cathay Hotels Company and Chairman of the SMC at the time. Moreover, Sassoon owned Arnhold’s company and they acted as general managers for Cathay Hotels, Ltd. Sassoon also had the ear of the Minister of Finance, H. H. Kung, who personally awarded Sir Victor with a ‘Cold Medal of the First Class’ for his charitable work in 1935. Whilst Sassoon may have had some influence, it is more than likely that greater events, further afield, had more impact. Shanghai’s armor had been punctured by the effects of the Great Depression and by the adoption of the silver standard by the US in 1933. Silver flooded out of China and reserves in Shanghai fell by half. That, combined with extravagant military expenditure to suppress an increasing Communist influence in a series of political manoeuvres, engineered by H. H. Kung, culminating in the nationalisation of the Bank of China in 1935. Its new board of directors included the financial genius, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong) and the infamous Creen Cang boss,Du Yuesheng—widely known as ‘big eared’ Duork on the building, which was designed by Tug Wilson of Palmer and Turner and Mr. H. S. Luke (Lu Qianshou), a British trained Chinese architect who worked for the bank, commenced following the demolition of the former club building in November 1935. By February 1936, 2,000 Oregon pine piles had been driven into the soil to the great annoyance of guests of the neighboring Cathay Hotel. The piles, which were up to 100 feet in length, required up to 3,000 blows from a three-ton steam hammer to set them in place. It was anticipated that the building would take just 18 months to complete. Even though the foundation work on the building had not been completed, an elaborate ceremony for laying the foundation stone took place on the requisite and auspicious date of 10’s October 1936 the ‘Double Tenth’ and the silver jubilee of the founding of the Republic of China. The chairman of the board of directors, Song Ziwen, presided over the affair. The new building was designed to be a symbol of progress, as well as stability. Song remarked that ‘our board of directors has adopted as a keynote of the new building practical utility combined with dignity without ostentation.’ Tug Wilson handed over a silver trowel to start the proceedings and H. S. Luke handed Madame Song a bronze casket containing newspapers of the day, plans of the building, and an assortment of items, including bank notes and a photo of the Bund, to be placed under the stone. The stone, with its mutilated Chinese inscription, which is to be found on the southernmost front of the building, is one of only two such memorials to survive on the Bund today. With its modern face of Suzhou granite embellished with motifs representing longevity, the building was to rise to a height of 277 feet, to stretch along Dianchi Road for 550 feet and to weigh a mammoth 70,000 tons. ‘Chromador Steel,’ known for its properties of strength and lightness and manufactured by Dorman, Long & Co. of Middlesbrough in England, provided the backbone for the structure. The bank’s premises were to be fully air-conditioned and 13 elevators were to be installed. It was planned to house the bank’s departments on the second and third floors, and the fourth floor was to be set up as a welfare centre for its employees to include dining rooms, lounges and a large lecture room. The remainder of the building was to be leased out. Huge vaults were to extend through the larger part of the basement, in which the first underground car park to be installed in any building along the Bund was also located. The bank’s American-made vault door, weighing over 30 tons, was installed in June 1937. Lined with costly marble from floor to ceiling the bank’s main, 25 foot-high, hall was to be found on the ground floor. The dignified, original Italian marble was ignobly cast aside in favour of the new during the bank’s renovation in 2006. However, the original marble lined entrance hall has thankfully been saved. In 1935, when construction work got underway, ttie bank moved back into its former premises at nearby 50 Hankou Road. The Bank of China, which had succeeded the Ta Ching Bank after the 1911 Revolution, had previously established their offices there in February 1912. Most sources record that the building was completed, or at least ‘flattened off,’ by the end of 193 and the Shanghai Sunday Times noted that the bank was ‘practically complete’ in December of that year. One year later, however, they reported that ‘the bane still stood in a state of semi-completion’ and that work was ‘progressing slowly.’ It was anticipated that the bank building would be finally completed in 1939. However, it wasn’t to be, as new priorities forced by the 5mb-Japanese War had left the building in a state of limbo. Moreover, any suppositions and fears over the damage that the weight of the building might cause proved to be well-founded, as the roads around the building had actually sunk. The SMC sent the bank a costly repair bill in August 1938. Palmer and Turner, who replied on the bank’s behalf, suggested that the road work be postponed as ‘the building is still in an unfinished state and likely to be so for some time.’ And it was for some time, with the North China Daily News reporting in November 1940 that the bank building was the only one to be ‘unmolested’ on the Bund and that its construction still hadn’t been completed. Under the Japanese puppet government based in Nanjing, led by Wang Jingwei, the Bank of China was allowed to resume operations under the direction of the reformed Central Bank of China in 1942. In September, the Bank of China reopened its office in Shanghai again in their old premises and not on the Bund. The Bank of China officially records that the building, or at least part of it, was first occupied in 1941 by the new regime’s reserve bank and that they did not actually move into their building until early 1946—some ten years after they had moved from the Bond. One of the most notorious episodes in the bank’s history took place in May 1949 when the Nationalist government emptied the bank’s vaults of its currency and gold reserves, and shipped them to Taiwan on the eve of the Communist victory. George Vine, assistant editor of the North China Daily News, watched from his suite at Broadway Mansions as ‘all the gold in China was being carried away in the traditional manner—by coolies.’
All text copyright 2008 to Peter Hibbard from
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