Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T10:46:38.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Remnants of power behind the Bund: Shanghai's IBC and Robert Dollar Buildings, 1920–22

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2008

Jeffrey W. Cody
Affiliation:
Department of ArchitectureThe Chinese University of Hong KongShatinNew Territories, Hong Kong

Abstract

Two buildings constructed in early twentieth-century Shanghai, one by a U.S. bank, the other by a shipping company, and both designed by a New York architect reveal the complex aesthetic and cultural issues that architecture must address in a global setting. These issues go beyond the buildings' facades to their construction, use, layout, leasing, and imagery. These two examples suggest that more comprehensive analyses of early twentieth-century commercial buildings in many global settings should lead to a clearer understanding of their significance.

Type
History
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alsayyad, Nezar ed., (1992). Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, Avebury, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Bergére, Marie-Claire (1986). L'Age d'Or de la Bourgeoisie Chinoise, Flammanon, Paris.Google Scholar
Booker, John (1990). Temples of Mammon: the Architecture of Banking, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Celik, Zeynep (1997). Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule, University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Chang, Leslie (1999). ‘From Paddy Fields to Towers in Shanghai’, Asian Wall Street Journal, 18 03.Google Scholar
Cleveland, Harold Van B. and Huertas, Thomas F (1985). Citibank, 1812–1970, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Cody, Jeffrey (1996). ‘American Planners in Republican China, 1911–1937’, Planning Perspectives 11, no. 4, pp. 339377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Thomas R. (1974). Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London.Google Scholar
Dayer, Roberta A. (1981). Bankers and Diplomats in China, 1917–1925: the Anglo-American Relationship, Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., London.Google Scholar
Domosh, Mona (1987). ‘Imagining New York's First Skyscrapers, 1895–1910’, Journal of Historical Geography 13, no. 3, pp. 233–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domosh, Mona (1996). Invented Cities: the Creation of Landscape in 19th-century New York and Boston, Yale University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
Dunlap, David (1998). ‘Who Owns N.Y. Skyline? Check the Fine Print’, International Herald Tribune, 1 09 1998.Google Scholar
Fenske, Gail and Holdsworth, Deryck (1992). ‘Corporate Identity and the New York Office Building, 1895–1915’, in Ward, David and Zunz, Olivier, eds., The Landscape of Modernity, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, pp. 129–59.Google Scholar
Fruehauf, Heinrich (1993). ‘Urban Exoticism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature’, in From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in 20th Century China, Widmer, Ellen and Der-wei Wang, David, eds., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp. 133–64.Google Scholar
Gibbs, Kenneth Turney (1984). Business Architectural Imagery in America, 1870–1930, UMI Press, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (1989). ‘Monument and Myth: the Building of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart’, in The Urban Experience, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hietkamp, Lenore (1998). The Park Hotel (1931–1934) and its Architect, Laszlo Hudec (1893–1958): Tallest Building in the Far East’ as Metaphor for Pre-Communist Shanghai, unpublished MA. thesis, University of Victoria, Canada.Google Scholar
Huebner, Jon W. (1989). ‘Architecture on the Shanghai Bund’, Papers in Far Eastern History, pp. 127159.Google Scholar
Israel, Jerry (1971). Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Richard (1984). ‘Metalwork of the Shanghai Bund’, Arts of Asia 14, no. 6, pp. 8899.Google Scholar
Karatani, Kojin (1995). Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money, trans, by Kohso, Sabu, ed. by Speaks, Michael, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
King, Anthony (1990). Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Lafeber, Walter (1993). The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: the American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lafeber, Walter (1998). The New Empire: an Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898, new and revised edition, Cornell University Press, Ithaca (first published 1963).Google Scholar
Lin, Shirley S. ed., (1990). Citicorp in China: a Colorful, Very Personal History Since 1902, Citicorp, privately printed, Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Lu, Hanchao, (1995). ‘Away from Nanking Road: Small Stores and Neighborhood Life in Modern Shanghai’, Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 1, pp. 93123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luo, Xiaowei, ed. (1996). A Guide to Shanghai Architecture [Shanghai Jianzhu Zhinan], Shanghai Renmin Meishu Chubanshe, Shanghai, pp. 3859.Google Scholar
MacPherson, Kerrie L. (1996). ‘The Shanghai Model in Historical Perspective’, in Yeung, Y.M. and Yun-wing, Sung, eds., Shanghai: Transformation and Modernization under China's Open Policy, Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, pp. 493527.Google Scholar
McElderry, Andrea L. (1976). Shanghai Old-Style Banks (chien-chuang), 1800–1935: a Traditional Institution in a Changing Society, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Mazuzan, George (1974). ‘Our New Gold Goes Adventuring: the American International Corporation in China’, Pacific Historical Review 43, no. 2, pp. 212232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moser, Michael J. and Moser, Yeone Wei-chih (1993). Foreigners Within the Gates: the Legations at Peking, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Moudry, Roberta M. (1995). Architecture as Cultural Design: the Architecture and Urbanism of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Olds, Kris (1997). ‘Globalizing Shanghai: the Global Intelligence Corps and the Building of Pudong’ in Cities 14, no. 2, pp. 109123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perera, Nihal (1998). Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka, Westview, New York.Google Scholar
Phelps, C.W. (1927). The Foreign Expansion of American Banks, Ronald Press, New York.Google Scholar
Prochaska, David (1990). Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1870–1920, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Pugach, Noel H, (1997). Same Bed, Different Dreams: a History of the Chinese American Bank of Commerce, 1919–1937, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Sih, Paul (1970). The Strenuous Decade: China's Nation Building Efforts, 1927–1937, St. John's University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Smith, Lyndon P. (1908). ‘The New Building for the National City Bank’, American Architect and Building News 94, no. 1713, pp. 129–31.Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathan (1990). The Search for Modern China, Norton, New York.Google Scholar
Stein, Joel and Levine, Caroline eds, (1990). Money Matters: a Critical Look at Bank Architecture, McGraw-Hill, New York.Google Scholar
Tomlan, Michael, ed. (1999). Preservation of What, for Whom?: a Critical Look at Historical Significance, National Council for Preservation Education, Ithaca, New York.Google Scholar
Twombly, Robert (1995). Power and Style, Hill & Wang, New York.Google Scholar
Van West, Carroll (1999). ‘Assessing Significance and Integrity in the National Register Process: Questions of Race, Class and Gender’, in Tomlan, Michael A., ed., Preservation of What, for Whom?: a Critical Look at Historical Significance, National Council for Preservation Education, Ithaca, New York, pp.109116.Google Scholar
Ward, David and Zunz, Olivier, eds. (1992). The Landscape of Modernity, Russell Sage Foundation, New York.Google Scholar
Willis, Carol (1995). Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago, Princeton Architectural Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Wright, Arthur and Cartwright, H.A., eds., (1908). Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, Ltd., London.Google Scholar
Wright, Gwendolyn (1991). The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Wu, Jiang (1986). The Relation and Differentiation in Architecture as seen in the Shanghai Bund (Cong Shanghai waitan kan jianzhu de guanlianxing yu ke shibeixing), unpublished M.A. thesis, Tongji University, Shanghai.Google Scholar
Xu, Jingyou (1992). ‘Modern Architecture of Shanghai (1840–1949)’, Building in China 5, no. 1, pp. 1225.Google Scholar
Yeoh, Brenda (1996). Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur.Google Scholar