China Merchants Steam Navigation Building

No. 9 the Bund (轮船招商局大楼, Lúnchuán Zhāoshāngjú Dàlóu) was built in 1901 as the head office of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, a company one article calls the first modern Chinese steamship firm. It stands on the corner of Fuzhou Road and is among the earliest historic buildings on the Bund, according to the company’s own archive.

The site belonged to Russell & Co. (旗昌洋行, Qíchāng Yángháng), an American trading house that also ran steamships. The China Merchants company opened in Shanghai in January 1873. In 1877, when Russell left the Chinese shipping trade, China Merchants bought its Shanghai steamship interests and Bund properties for 2.22 million taels of silver and moved into the old Russell north building.

In 1901 the company built a new head office on what had been the Russell garden. Sources disagree on the architect. Chinese Wikipedia names Morrison & Gratton (玛礼逊洋行, Mǎlǐxùn Yángháng) and the Guangdong contractor Zhao Daoren (赵道仁, Zhào Dàorén); another article says Atkinson & Dallas (通和洋行, Tōnghé Yángháng). The company’s archive page names no one. Chinese Wikipedia adds that the building would have been numbered 8, and the company chose 9 because the character 九 suggests lasting.

The river front follows a classical three-part pattern, with a two-storey veranda: Tuscan columns on the second floor and Corinthian columns on the third. Doors and windows are arched. As built, the ground floor was blue stone and the upper floors red brick, with a paired-column loggia at the centre and a gable at each end, according to Chinese Wikipedia.

China Merchants moved its property into American hands in November 1937 to keep it from Japanese control, and the building came back to the company in early 1946. After the Shanghai Military Control Commission took over the company in May 1949, the building passed through several users, among them the port authority and its port supervision bureau, which gave it the nickname 港监大楼 (Gǎngjiān Dàlóu). It stayed in official use until 1998.

That December it was handed to China Merchants Group. The original deeds had been lost in the war, so title was registered only in April 2001. The restoration, designed by Chang Ching (常青, Cháng Qīng) of Tongji University, rebuilt the red-brick facade, the pitched roof and the gables, and finished on 26 December 2004. Afterwards the lower floors were let as shops and the top floor used for offices and display.

The building is protected at national level as part of the Bund Buildings group, declared in 1996.