Yokohama Specie Bank Building

The Yokohama Specie Bank Building (横滨正金银行大楼, Héngbīn Zhèngjīn Yínháng Dàlóu) at Bund No. 24 was built in 1924 for the Shanghai branch of a Japanese bank. It is a granite neoclassical front by Palmer & Turner (公和洋行, Gōnghé Yángháng), the firm that also designed the HSBC building down the Bund, and its facade carries two unusual carvings: a samurai and a bodhisattva, above the ground floor.

The Yokohama Specie Bank was founded in 1880, with a third of its capital put up by the Japanese government. It was the first Japanese bank in Shanghai, opening a branch in 1893 in rented premises on Nanjing Road. In the 1920s it bought the Bund lot where the Old Sassoon firm (老沙逊洋行, Lǎo Shāxùn Yángháng) had stood since the 1840s; sources give the purchase year as 1920 or 1923. The old building came down, Palmer & Turner drew up the new one, and the contractor finished it in August 1924.

The facade is symmetrical and divided into three parts in the classical manner. The whole front is granite. Two Ionic columns rise through three floors in the centre, and a Greek-style cornice closes the composition at the top. Above the ground floor the wall carries the carved heads of a Japanese warrior and a bodhisattva. The main entrance has a copper revolving door. The design is close kin to the Chartered Bank building at No. 18, also by Palmer & Turner and finished shortly before; the two fronts follow nearly the same layout. Inside, the ground floor was the banking hall, with offices on the floors above. Chinese and English Wikipedia disagree on whether the building has six or seven storeys.

After 1941, under the Japanese occupation, the bank took over the customs deposits that HSBC had held and used the ground floor of the Glen Line Building at No. 28 as well. After Japan’s surrender the Chinese government seized the building for the Central Bank of China and renamed it the Central Building (中央大楼, Zhōngyāng Dàlóu).

After 1949 it housed the East China regional office of the People’s Bank of China. From 1956 the Shanghai Textile Administration used it as offices, staying until the 1990s. It is now the Shanghai branch business office of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (中国工商银行, Zhōngguó Gōngshāng Yínháng); the official heritage list also records a textile holding company as a current user.

The building was listed in the second batch of Shanghai Outstanding Historical Buildings in 1994 and has been part of the nationally protected Bund group since 1996.