Bank of Communications Building

This plain, vertical building at No. 14 is the youngest of the old buildings on the Bund. It was finished in 1948 for the Bank of Communications (交通银行, Jiāotōng Yínháng), the last of the Bund group to be completed before 1949, and since 1951 it has housed the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions (上海市总工会, Shànghǎi Shì Zǒnggōnghuì).

The site has a longer history. It first belonged to the British trading house Dent & Co. (宝顺洋行, Bǎoshùn Yángháng). It then passed to the German Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (德华银行, Déhuá Yínháng), which built a four-storey Renaissance-style bank here in the 1880s. After the First World War, German property in China was confiscated, and in 1919 the Shanghai branch of the Bank of Communications, founded in 1908, took over the building. In 1928 the bank moved its head office here.

Plans for a new building were drawn up before the war. According to the Shanghai Urban Construction Archives, the bank commissioned a design in 1937 from the Hungarian architect C. H. Gonda (鸿达, Hóngdá), but the Japanese invasion stopped the project. Gonda, born in 1889, had worked in Shanghai since 1920; his Capitol Theatre (1927) and Cathay Theatre (1932) still stand. The Bank of Communications was his last large Shanghai project.

Building finally began after the war. The city’s heritage column gives the dates as 1946 to October 1948, with Gonda’s firm as architect and the Chinese contractor 陶馥记营造厂 (Táofùjì Yíngzàochǎng) as builder; the Urban Construction Archives give 1947 to 1949. Both agree that it was the last of the Bund group to be finished.

The design is late Art Deco. The main facade is symmetrical, with strong vertical lines and almost no ornament. The whole ground floor and the door frames are faced in black marble; the walls above are cement render, so the base reads as a dark band under a pale body. The plan is shaped like the character 山, a taller centre with lower wings. The frame is reinforced concrete, six storeys with a partial seventh, on a site of 1,908 square metres.

The entrance hall is the richest part. It has a coloured terrazzo floor, a circular staircase with copper railings on either side, and 36 columns whose lower halves, like the walls and floor, are faced in red tiles. The entrance originally had a revolving door. In a recent restoration the facade, the entrance hall, the second-floor ceiling and the two stairwells were repaired to the original patterns and materials.

In 1951 the bank’s head office moved to Beijing, and the building was handed to the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions as offices, with part of it still used as a bank. It is listed as no. 3A002 in the third batch of Shanghai Outstanding Historical Buildings, and it is part of the Bund Buildings group protected at the national level since 1996.

The building is a working office and is not open to visitors. The black marble base and the entrance can be seen from the pavement.