Colorful past masked behind luxury apartments' bland facade
The gigantic, simple-cut Taixing Apartments on Nanjing Road was once called “a luxury apartment house” by renowned Shanghai architectural historian Luo Xiaowei.
It was formerly an upscale residential building, known as the Medhurst Apartments, when it was built in 1934.
“The simple modern building is found with vertical lines over the entrance, while the wings are marked with strong horizontal lines,” Luo writes in her 1990s book “A Guide to Shanghai Architecture.”
Taixing Apartments is a simple modern building with vertical lines over the entrance, while the wings feature strong horizontal lines.
“The 8,837-square-meter building was a complex of apartments and shops invested in by Metropolitan Land Co. The company purchased a 2.15-mu land (1,434 square meters) at the prominent location of the Bubbling Well Road (now Nanjing Road W.) and Medhurst Road (now Taixing Road) to expand business and boast influence,” says Li Zhendong, vice chief architect of the Shanghai Jing’an Real Estate (Group) Co Ltd, who scooped archives for Jiang’an District’s old houses.
According to the research of Tongji University professor Qian Zonghao, the city’s residential architecture developed from early shikumen (stone-gated) houses to three-story apartments emerging in the 1920s.
As Shanghai’s land price continued to soar in the 1920s, taller apartment buildings, between six and nine floors began to spring up. Although every flat in the taller buildings was smaller than before, the living quality of flat dwellers improved significantly due to modern design and facilities.
“Tall apartment buildings were in either Art Deco or modern style. The Medhurst Apartments were designed in a late Art Deco style which resembled modern style,” Qian says.
The entrance leading to the residential flats upstairs
The Medhurst Apartments was called “Shanghai’s new million-dollar building house” by the China Press before its opening. It was designed by Davies & Brooke, a veteran British architectural firm in old Shanghai whose signature works range from Lyceum Theater, Astor House, Great Northern Telegraph Building at No. 7 on the Bund to the Grand Hotel on Xizang Road M., a 5-minute walk from the Nanjing Road pedestrian shopping street.
“Modern conceptions dominate the outward appearance while the interior was arranged after detailed study to fulfill the peculiar needs of the Shanghai resident and the demands of modern city life,” the China Press reported on March 1, 1934.
According to the report, the building uniquely housed two types of apartments — self-contained and furnished serviced apartments. The dining room, lounges and cocktail bar, together with other service features, “furnished residents with all the facilities of a big, modern hotel plus the quietness and detachment of life at home."
The ninth floor had been given over to the dining room, which had been furnished with warmth and gaiety along modern lines, with a cocktail bar and secluded lounges. In addition, the modern design and color scheme of the main lounge contained an atmosphere of Chinese motifs.
The report noted that special features of the building were two penthouses, which had seven rooms each and faced out to an attractive, spacious roof garden.
Terraces were available for the penthouse residents, as well as from the ninth floor lounge and dining room. A drawing room, study, sun porch, three bedrooms, three bathrooms and kitchens with frigidaires were among the facilities of the penthouse apartments.
The corridor is open to the outdoors on one side, with both ends attached to the staircases. Taixing Apartments is a simple modern building with vertical lines over the entrance, while the wings feature strong horizontal lines.
Apartments with this modern design and facilities were attractive to the city’s upper-class dwellers. An obituary in the North-China Herald on February 9, 1938 painted a picture of a typical Medhurst apartment resident — Mr. Julian Rosenfield, partner in the brokerage firm of A.B. Rosenfeld & Sons, who unfortunately died suddenly early on February 7 in his home in the Medhurst Apartments after a long illness.
Shanghai-born Rosenfeld was educated in Shanghai and Weihaiwei (in today’s Weihai, Shandong Province) and later completed his education at the University of California and the Mount Tamalpals Military Academy before returning to Shanghai.
At the time of his death, he was a partner in the brokerage firm of Rosenfeld & Sons, which he founded about five years earlier. He was Mason and a member of the American Club, the Columbia Country Club and the Shanghai Race Club. In the business world, he was a member of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the American Chamber of Commerce, the New York Cotton Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Commodity Exchange Inc., of New York, and the Canadian Commodity Exchange Inc.
Medhurst Apartments in the 1930s
According to Li Zhendong’s research, the Metropolitan company was founded in 1930, which was much later than some veteran foreign developers, like the Sassoon & Co or Shanghai Land Investment Company.
“The Metropolitan company’s early founders saw a business opportunity of flooding a large amount of silver into Shanghai settlements brought by Chinese officials and landlords during the Warlord era. So they founded the real estate company without much money and issued stocks and bonds to raise funds. The Medhurst Apartments was a successful investment which boasted the company’s reputation,” Li says.
“Owing to the great location, some renowned doctors opened clinics in the Medhurst Apartments, such as famous urologist Chen Bangdian, who rented a five-room apartment for his clinic. These clinics added fame and faith of this building.”
As of today, there are 40 households living in Taixing Apartments.
A meeting report of Metropolitan Land Co’s shareholders at the No. 17 on the Bund proved his words.
According to the report on the North-China Herald, December 21, 1938, Chairman F. R. Smith said capable management, plus the excellent food served in “Medhurst” continued to fill the building to capacity, fully justifying the investment made in this enterprise.“Rent collections in the International Settlement, the Western District and the French Concession were higher than for the past several years, our properties in these areas continuing to give a satisfactory return,” Smith said during the meeting.
In 1955, the building was taken over by the Chinese government and embraced a historical role afterwards. In 1971, Shanghai Telephone Company installed microwave transceivers and parabolic antennas on Sheshan Mountain and in the Medhurst Apartments (now Taixing Apartments) respectively, which enabled people in Shanghai to watch programs sent by Beijing-based CCTV.
Eight years later, it also served as an international call room for the Shanghai Long-Distance Telephone Bureau. With the help of a communication satellite, many Shanghainese managed to talk to their overseas relatives and friends whom they lost contact with for decades.
Today the building houses a China Mobile branch on the ground floor and residential flats upstairs, which has retained its historical role, from a luxury apartment house to an important communication house.
Today the building houses a China Mobile branch on the ground floor and residential flats upstairs.
Yesterday: Medhurst Apartments
Today: Taixing Apartments
Address: 934 Nanjing Road W.
Architect: Davies and Brooke, Civil Engineers and Architects
Tips: You may enter the building in a quiet way. It’s hard to imagine its past as a luxury apartments building from its current condition.
Deluxe Frigidaires for Medhurst residents
The completion today of Shanghai’s new and luxurious apartment hotel, the Medhurst, marks the introduction of the 1934 model Deluxe FrigidairesMedhurst, will find a new Deluxe Frigidaire in their apartments, which offer new beauty convenience, quality and economy in the low-priced refrigerator field. This new super 63 Frigidaire has a larger food storage capacity with three trays holding 78 cubes of ice at one freezing. The exterior finish is coated with the famous lifetime porcelain-on-steel while the interior is completed with stainless porcelain in a one-piece seamless food compartment. Further special features of the new apartment Frigidaire are the improved cold control automatic defrosting interior lighting and the automatic trav releasing. The introduction of the new refrigidaire into Shanghai is timely for the coming summer season and will no doubt prove popular among both foreign and Chinese residents in this city. (Excerpt from “The China Press”, March 1, 1934)
