HSBC Building

This is the largest building on the Bund: the Shanghai head office that the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (汇丰银行, Huìfēng Yínháng) opened in 1923, now the head office of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (上海浦东发展银行, Shànghǎi Pǔdōng Fāzhǎn Yínháng). Its dome, its six Ionic columns and its two bronze lions are the images most people carry away from the Bund.

HSBC had been in Shanghai since 3 April 1865, when it opened for business in premises on the waterfront. By 1919 the bank commissioned a new building. Alexander Stephen, the Shanghai manager, gave the architects Palmer & Turner (公和洋行, Gōnghé Yángháng) a short brief: spare no expense, and dominate the Bund.

Work began in 1921 and finished in June 1923. The building was officially opened on 23 June 1923. It took three street numbers, 10 to 12, on a site of 9,338 square metres, and no other building on the Bund has a wider frontage. Behind the granite there is a steel frame. The main block is five storeys, with a partial seventh storey at the centre under the dome.

The Bund entrance leads into an octagonal hall. Above it is a mosaic dome, designed in 1923 by a British artist and laid by Italian craftsmen in the Venetian technique. Eight panels show cities where the bank had offices, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, New York, Bangkok, Paris and Calcutta, each with a guardian figure. The ceiling above carries the sun god, the moon goddess, a harvest goddess and the twelve signs of the zodiac. In 1956 the mosaics were painted over. They stayed hidden until repair work in November 1997 brought them back to light. The 1998 restoration repaired about 200 square metres of mosaic.

The lions have their own story. In 1921 Stephen decided that a pair of lions should guard the entrance. The sculptor Henry Poole modelled them, they were cast in England, and they arrived for the 1923 opening. The roaring one was named Stephen, after Alexander Stephen; the calm, seated one was named Stitt, after the Shanghai manager Gordon Stitt. People rubbed their paws for luck. In 1935 the bank had a larger pair, modelled on these, cast in Shanghai for its new Hong Kong head office. The lions on the steps now are replicas made around 1997. The 1923 originals are held by the Shanghai History Museum.

During the Pacific War the building was in Japanese hands, and HSBC reopened its Shanghai office in 1946. In 1955 the bank gave up the building and moved to smaller premises. The building became the seat of the Shanghai municipal government and was known as the Municipal Government Building. The government left in 1995. On 12 December 1997 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank acquired the building, restored it, and moved its head office in on 23 June 1998.

The building is listed as no. 1A003 in the first batch of Shanghai Outstanding Historical Buildings, and it is part of the Bund Buildings group protected at the national level since 1996.

The ground floor is a working bank branch. The exterior can be seen at any time. Since April 2025 the bank has shown the octagonal hall and the banking hall free of charge on short booked lunchtime visits, reported as two sessions a day at 11:30 and 12:00, entered from the side gate at 36 Fuzhou Road. These arrangements come from news reports rather than from the bank’s own website, so check before planning around them.