Lihua building

Lihua building

Lihua building, located at 114 Jiefang North Road, Heping District, Tianjin, was built from 1936 to 1938. It is a cultural relic protection unit in Tianjin. It is an office and apartment building funded by Swiss Jew Li Yapu and designed and built by the French. It is also one of the earliest high-rise buildings with modern functions and technology in Tianjin. It is now the seat of Tianjin Branch of Agricultural Bank of China. Its facade and structure represent the most advanced level at that time, and it is one of the representative works of modern architecture in Tianjin.

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Architectural history

Lihua building, located at No. 116 Jiefang North Road, Heping District, is a historic building with special protection level. It was built in 1939 and designed by mule, engineer of Yonghe construction company of French business. It was invested and built by Li Yapu, a Swiss Jew.

Li Yapu came to Tianjin in 1925. Two years later, he set up Lihua, a foreign firm, to run clocks, jewelry, diamonds, etc., making a lot of profits. Later, he turned to pawn and life insurance. Later, Lihua loan bank, Lihua savings and life insurance company and Lihua real estate company were established. Soon after that, the land located in middle street of British concession (now Jiefang North Road) was purchased and the office and residential apartment building was built, named Lihua building. This building is one of the earliest high-rise buildings with modern technology and functions in Tianjin. The main building is a 10 storey, 43 meter high reinforced concrete frame structure. The exterior wall of the main building is covered with dark brown pockmarked tiles, and the color is stable and generous. There are two elevators in the building with reasonable layout. The architectural composition is asymmetric, and the external modeling is well arranged, which is a typical modernist style architecture.

Organic facilities

Lihua building is an apartment building with office and residence. It is one of the earliest high-rise buildings with modern function and technology in Tianjin. The main building has 10 floors (excluding the second floor), 43 meters high, covering an area of 2133 square meters, with a total construction area of 6193 square meters. The building plane is convex, and its structure is reinforced concrete frame structure.

The main building is long from east to west, and is basically vertical to Jiefang North Road. In the north is the stairwell. The plan of the East building is rectangular, and that of the West building is serrated. A rectangular courtyard is enclosed between the main building and the West building. On the ground floor of the main building, there are hall, business hall, manager's room, boiler room, etc.; on the second to the eighth floor, there are complete sets of high-grade apartments, and each apartment has hall, guest room, reception room, washroom, kitchen, dining room, etc. The guest room and reception room are equipped with dressing room, toilet and warm corridor; the ninth floor is Li Yapu's residence, which is similar to the flat. The difference is that the guest room becomes a bedroom, with a study and cloakroom added, and there is a balcony outside the warm corridor. The ground floor of the East building is for shops, and the ground floor of the West building is for garages.

The interior decoration of the building is exquisite, and all the interior doors and windows are made of high-grade hardwood; the lobby, hall, reception room, guest room, etc. are mostly floor type large glass doors; the staircases are all color terrazzo floors inlaid with copper strips, and each room has heating equipment. The ground and columns of the first floor hall are decorated with warm marble; the guest rooms, reception rooms, bedrooms and dining rooms are mostly made of mat hardwood floors. The building has complete water supply and sewerage, heating, sanitation and lighting facilities.

The facade of the whole building is a good example of modern high-rise buildings in Tianjin.

architectural style

With Western tradition as the main line, Lihua building is the ingenious combination of modern European Academies' revivalism, new art movement and "decorative art school" in Tianjin. Due to the participation of Chinese architects and craftsmen, the shadow of Chinese traditional architecture can also be seen in these imported buildings. This unique context is not the same as the buildings in the cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which once had colonial color. Even compared with the similar buildings in Europe and America, some of them are even better. It makes the retro style and the Art Nouveau movement style of European style architecture have excellent material selection and construction, and integrates the composition rules and personalized rhetoric of the academic school. It almost includes the typical architectural styles of various countries in the early stage of the Art Nouveau movement in the Western retro era, and the "decorative art school" in the heyday of the new architecture movement, showing an elegant and fresh artistic style, In addition, they live in harmony with the nearby retro architecture, reach a dialogue in some form, and create a kind of "modern" fashion full of historical sense.

historical background

Built from 1936 to 1938, the building was designed by P. Mulle, a construction management company of Yonghe, a French businessman. The site was originally owned by Renji foreign company, a British businessman. In 1936, Lihua foreign company, Lihua loan bank and Lihua (small) life insurance company, the founder of Lihua (small) life insurance company, Li Yapu, a Swiss Jew, bought the site and demolished the old building and built Lihua building on its original site. Li Yapu's foreign name (marcei Leopold) is translated as M. Leopold, which has the same name as his foreign bank, bank and company. Therefore, the building he built is named Leopold building.

Founder of the building

Li Yapu was a French Jew. In the first World War, he enlisted in the army, and then absconded from the army. He was asked to buy a Swiss passport and came to China. In 1925, he wandered from Vladivostok to Tianjin. At that time, Switzerland had not set up a consulate in Tianjin, and its consular affairs were handled by Swiss merchant Li & Fung. When Li Yapu came to Tianjin, he was 26 years old. Because he was good at drilling, he soon found a job selling jade diamonds in Liwei foreign company, a French business. When Li first arrived in Tianjin, he was still "single", but within a year or two, he became a well-established foreign businessman. In his business, Li met a capitalist named sun Xiuyan, who was the owner and manager of Pacific Deji watch shop (in the Japanese concession) and dexiuzhai watch shop (in the northeast corner). Sun Youli used Li Yapu's relationship in the British concession to set up "Lihua foreign company" in a small shop on Victoria Road (now 148 Jiefang Road), whose registered name is Liu Huatang. Lihua foreign company started business in 1927, and Li later recruited a capitalist named Lu Donghou to start the import and export business of high-end luxury goods. After two or three years, Li Yapu became one of the rich businessmen. After that, Lihua foreign bank moved into the HSBC building, and since then, Lihua loan bank and Lihua (small) life insurance company have been established. The Lihua building was invested in 1936.

Building experience

During the construction of Lihua building, the "July 7th incident" happened in July 1937. The price of gold and foreign currency in Beijing and Tianjin rose sharply, and the war was raging. All the bureaucrat capitalists gave up their investment intention in real estate. Because of the unpredictable situation, the war between China and Japan did not know when it would be. Lihua building is built in the British concession, which is relatively "safe" to avoid disaster.

At the end of 1938, a huge building with a height of 43 meters and a total of 11 storeys stood on Victoria Road (now Jiefang North Road) in the British concession. Although Victoria Road was full of buildings at that time, most of them were bank buildings with two to three storeys. The buildings with more than seven storeys were only located in quanyechang (built in 1928) and Bohai building (built in 1934) in the French concession, and they were all local There are only Lihua building with ten floors.

After the liberation of Tianjin, Li Yapu was sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment by the people's government for concealing and stealing the remains of Japanese army warehouses. Li was deported in March 1954. Then the people's government put Lihua building on "auction", and the municipal real estate company bought it at the highest price of 3.5 billion yuan (old currency value), becoming a public property.

From 1954 to 1972, the building was used by the CPC Hebei Provincial Committee and the municipal reform committee. In August 1972, the building was changed to Haihe Hotel, and later to Lihua Hotel. The building is now used by the Tianjin Branch of Agricultural Bank of China.

historical significance

Lihua building, which was once listed as the tallest building in Tianjin in old China, not only witnessed the modern history of China, but also experienced the pace of urban development in Tianjin. Now there are more than 100 buildings in Tianjin that are higher than Lihua building. Lihua building will always stand among many buildings with its unique charm and become the pride of Tianjin.

Transportation

Take bus No.13, 96, 953, 823, sightseeing No.1 and get off at Dalian Road station. If you are interested, you can walk across Jiefang Bridge from Tianjin station, and walk along Jiefang North Road to the southeast. Along the way, you can browse the buildings of various countries on this financial street in Tianjin, and you can get to Lihua building in about half an hour.

Address: No.116, Jiefang North Road, Heping District, Tianjin

Longitude: 117.21335601807

Latitude: 39.12328338623

Ticket information: free.

Chinese PinYin : Li Hua Da Lou