Tongchong Haitai General Chamber of Commerce Building

Tongchong Haitai General Chamber of Commerce Building

Tongchong Haitai General Chamber of Commerce building is located at No.44 Taowu Road, Nantong City, Jiangsu Province. It was built in 1920 and covers an area of more than 26000 square meters. The building faces south in the north, with the central axis of porch, hall and conference hall as the central axis, and the two sides are surrounded by office buildings to form a courtyard. The building covers an area of 4707 square meters. It was designed and built by sun zhixia, a famous modern architect from Nantong. It is the representative building of the first city in modern China. As a model of absorbing western architectural art and an excellent modern architecture, this building with European classical style was recorded in the history of Chinese architecture and Chinese architecture in the 20th century respectively. As one of the few trade association buildings in modern China, the building is especially valuable and is the quintessence of the cultural heritage of the 20th century. In 2013, it became a national key cultural relics protection unit.

origin

Tongchong Haitai General Chamber of Commerce was first named nantongzhou General Chamber of Commerce. It was founded in 1902, the 28th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty. Together with Sheng Xuanhuai's Shanghai commercial convention office, it was the first two chambers of Commerce in China.

The Nantong chamber of Commerce, with Zhang Jian's third brother Zhang Chen as its prime minister, is located beside the Dasheng bridge. Dasheng bridge is a bridge on the North tributary of the original East Street across the Shi River, which is from Renmin Road to Jianshe Road. At that time, Zhang Jian and others had set up Dasheng gauze factory for seven years. The gauze industry in Tongzhou and its surrounding areas led to the rapid development of all walks of life, and the powerful operators emerged. The sense of self-reliance gave birth to the chamber of Commerce. At this time, Zhang Jian was starting his own business in an all-round way, and it was urgent for organizations like the chamber of Commerce to have a solid foundation and strong support. The Nantong chamber of Commerce will surely bring a relatively smooth development stage. The chamber of Commerce has developed from the brocade industry to all walks of life. The region ranges from Tongzhou to Haimen and Chongming (it is said that it mainly refers to the outer sand of Chongming, that is, today's Qidong), and then to Taizhou, which also covers Rugao, Taixing, Jiangyan, Hai'an and other places.

experience

In August 1904, the Huabu merchants surnamed Liu in Haimen wrote to set up branches in Tongzhou, Chongming and Haimen. Therefore, Tongzhou chamber of Commerce was renamed tongchonghai Huabu General Chamber of Commerce. Zhang Chen continued to serve as prime minister and Liu Guixin served as assistant director. The three branches also had their own prime ministers. Before long, the site of the meeting was moved to wusheng lane near Jinsi street and behind Xiwu temple. In 1906, it was renamed as tongchong Haitai General Chamber of Commerce. It drafted the chapter 13 and 80 articles.

In August of the first year of Xuantong (1909), Zhang Chen was transferred to the general office of Jiangsu agriculture, industry and Commerce Bureau, and Liu Guixin was the prime minister. In July 1910, it was renamed tongchong Haitai Business Association (hereinafter referred to as the General Chamber of Commerce). It adopted the system of director. Zhang Chen, Liu Guixin, Jiang daomin, Zhou Heng and Gao Xiang were appointed as the president and vice president and directors respectively. The meeting site was also moved to the former TongZhou public girls' school in liujiaxiang, and the school was moved to the former site of guzhumeiyuan in the same year. The General Chamber of Commerce, which lived in the alleys, was gradually unable to meet the needs of complicated business. It became increasingly cramped and did not see everyone's tolerance. In 1920, it decided to sell the meeting site of liujiaxiang, together with the tax collected by the flower industry and the cloth industry, and got a total of 21000 yuan. It chose Taowu road to invest in a new site. The General Chamber of Commerce has built a mansion from dashengqiao to Taowu Road, and the site of Siyi also reflects the development process of Nantong chamber of Commerce from one side.

Different from other chambers of Commerce in China, Nantong chamber of commerce not only carries out business activities, but also involves local politics, military affairs, education, charity, municipal administration, etc. The emergence of Zhang Jian and other emerging forces made the decadent local government appear incompetent and inaction, and the gentry attached more importance to officials than officials became the characteristics of Nantong at that time. The action of the chamber of commerce is an important aspect of the formation of this feature. In fact, the General Chamber of Commerce in Nantong has become "the general hub of a city" (in the words of the county records of the Republic of China).

The positive action of Nantong General Chamber of Commerce in the recovery of Nantong during the 1911 Revolution is the most prominent example of its involvement in politics. In 1911, when the Wuchang Uprising broke out in 1911, Zhang Jian was boating outside the city of Wuchang. He was the first to bring the news that the uprising broke out and the Qing army was retreating to Tongzhou. As a result, liujiaxiang chamber of commerce became the place where Zhang Chen and other leading figures and the secret merchants of gauze, groceries, Beijing goods, wood industry, tea and tobacco industry studied the recovery of Tongzhou, while Zhang Jian planned and directed behind the scenes. On September 18 (November 18 of the Gregorian calendar), the Shanghai recovery army sent ships to Hong Kong, and the chamber of Commerce led the way to invite local people to Hong Kong. The next day, a local conference was held in the chamber of Commerce, in which Zhang Chen and other five people were elected as the commander in chief, civil affairs chief, military and political chief, finance chief and judiciary chief. Accordingly, the general headquarters, civil affairs department, military and Political Department, finance department and judiciary department were established. Four or five days later, the General Chamber of Commerce held a ceremony to celebrate the restoration, that is, the inauguration ceremony of these organizations. They are nominally two systems of organizations with the General Chamber of Commerce, but in fact they are both you and me.

Tongchong Haitai business association decided to move to Taowu Road, which was an important part of Zhang Jian's new urban development. Taowu road used to be a wasteland, with many graves and weeds. It is separated from the original city by the broad Hao river, which needs to be bypassed to reach. Zhang Jian chose this place to build a new urban area. In 1919, he built the second park bridge (now the South Park Bridge) and the 87 meter long Yuelong bridge (now abandoned, changed into a road) the next year. It was convenient to get to Taowu road. In Taowu Road, the first-class more popular theater in the country at that time was built, and the Nantong club, which is comparable to the German club in Shanghai beach, was built. Then it was waiting for a more magnificent building to be settled, which is the new building of tongchong Haitai business association. There is no doubt that the task of new building design falls on sun zhixia. He is an architect trained by Zhang Jian. He finished the design of Jiangsu Provincial Advisory Bureau building after he graduated from the surveying and mapping department and Civil Engineering Department of Tongzhou Minli Normal University (now Nantong Normal University) in Xuantong in the second year. Then he built a library, a museum, a weather station, a hospital, a road and a house in Nantong with Zhang Jian Gengshu theater and Nantong club are also works of sun zhixia. Sun zhixia lived up to people's expectations and finally left a masterpiece for the history of Chinese architecture with the new building of the General Chamber of Commerce.

Tongchong Haitai General Chamber of commerce is newly built into two buildings. The second floor of the front building (no longer exists) is adjacent to Taowu road. The middle building is a three story high archway gate with round arches on the ground floor. The East and west of the two-story building are symmetrical, and the top of the Square Pavilion is set at each end of the roof. Nantong cotton, yarn, securities and miscellaneous grain stock exchange was set up in qianlou.

Building structure

When you enter through the middle door of the front building and cross the concrete bridge, you come to the back building, which is the main building, commonly known as the General Chamber of Commerce building. The building is about 100 meters long and 50 meters wide, covering an area of 4707 square meters.

When you climb the stone level (there are slopes on both sides for disabled wheelchair access), you will arrive at a huge triangular facade supported by four 20 meter high Greek style doorposts. Some people call it "Shanhua" (Shanhua originally refers to the triangular walls formed on both sides of the Xieshan style roof in traditional Chinese Architecture), forming a porch protruding from the facade of the building.

Inside is the entrance hall of a two-story spatial dome, on which a large dome can be seen from a distance outside the building. There is an ear room in the East and west of the hall, on which there is a small round tower and a dome. In the north of the hall, there is a large conference room which can accommodate 450 people. There is a rostrum and an auditorium with a floor. The front gate, the concrete bridge, the lobby, the hall and the conference room of the building form the central axis of the whole building, and the two sides are symmetrical courtyards composed of two floors. According to the needs of the functions of the chamber of Commerce, there are office rooms and auxiliary rooms. On the south side of the ground floor, there are reception room 2, business room 1, staff room 2 and public office 1. The two rooms are respectively mail room and reception room, and the plane is in the shape of "■".

Each floor in the courtyard is connected with an ambulatory, and the brick columns are erected outside the corridor to build a multi arch, which is coherent and compact. The open space in the middle of the courtyard is a small flower garden. There are small halls at both ends of the East and West courtyards. There are stone steps under the door and "mountain flowers" on the top, which echo the stone steps "mountain flowers" at the middle gate. The General Chamber of Commerce building is generous, calm, solemn, elegant and stable, which is closely related to the business management. When the new building of the General Chamber of Commerce was completed, the site of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce was much inferior. Forty years later, a brief history of modern Chinese Architecture (published by China Industrial Press in 1962) was compiled by the editorial board of Chinese architectural history of the architectural theory and History Research Office of the Academy of Architectural Sciences of the Ministry of construction. It was included in the elevation and plan of the building and was introduced. Comments were made in terms of "compact", "concise" and "rigorous". This book has been revised many times and has been used as a teaching material for colleges and universities.

The thesis that Nantong can be called the first city in modern China put forward by Academician Wu Liangyong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Sciences has been confirmed by more and more people, and the General Chamber of Commerce played an important role in the formation of Nantong as the first city in modern China, which has rich and irreplaceable connotation in the modern history of China. The three buildings designed by sun zhixia, collected from authoritative architectural historical records such as the brief history of Chinese architecture, have been designated as national key cultural relics protection units in Nanjing provincial Advisory Bureau and Nantong Haonan bieye. The building of tongchong Haitai General Chamber of commerce is one of sun zhixia's highest level of architectural design, which witnessed Nantong's leading history in the country and ranked among the national key cultural relics protection units It's not surprising.

Address: No.44 Taowu Road, Nantong

Longitude: 120.85679534665

Latitude: 32.009582958138

Chinese PinYin : Tong Chong Hai Tai Zong Shang Hui Da Lou