Great Northern Telegraph Building

The Great Northern Telegraph Building (大北电报公司大楼, Dàběi Diànbào Gōngsī Dàlóu) at No. 7 the Bund was built for the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company. It opened in January 1908 and is now the Shanghai branch of Bangkok Bank.

The site belonged to the American trading house Russell & Co. (旗昌洋行, Qíchāng Yángháng). On 15 August 1881 the Great Northern Telegraph Company rented the old building here, and in 1882 it set up the city’s first telephone exchange inside it. After Russell closed in 1891, ownership of the land passed to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company.

By the early 1900s the old building was too small. The company hired the British firm Atkinson & Dallas (通和洋行, Tōnghé Yángháng) to design a new one. In October 1905 a fire broke out in the unfinished offices; it took more than two hours to put out, and the roof collapsed. The third floor and attic had to be rebuilt, which delayed completion by about a year, according to English Wikipedia. Sources differ on the dates. English and Chinese Wikipedia, a Chinese article and Wikidata point to 1908, but one Chinese Wikipedia passage says 1906 to 1907, and a University of Maine guide gives 1907.

The building was shared. The British-owned Eastern Extension and American-owned Commercial Cable telegraph companies also had offices, and there were three separate entrances on the Bund, one for each. It opened with a pneumatic tube system for telegrams, a lift made by Smith & Stevens of London, and public telephones in the ground-floor hall.

The design is French late Renaissance. The two lower floors are faced in stone and the upper floors finished in plaster, with Baroque columns and triangular and arched pediments over the windows. The roof ends in a black dome at each side. Sources disagree on the height, giving four or five storeys.

The Great Northern company kept the ground floor until 1921, then moved to its own building at 4 Avenue Edward VII, now 34 East Yan’an Road. In 1945 the Commercial Bank of China moved in from No. 6. After 1949 the building went to the Yangtze River Shipping Administration. In the 1990s Bangkok Bank took over the right to use it. A Chinese article describes a 1994 conservation and fit-out for the bank. The Royal Thai Consulate-General used the third floor until 2008.

The city listed it in 1994 as no. 2A004, and it is protected at national level as part of the Bund Buildings group, declared in 1996.