TheBank of Communications Building is located at No. 14 onthe Bund,Shanghai. The building was designed in a modernArt-Deco style, combined with Chinese elements, by Hungarian architectC. H. Gonda.[1] It is an eight-story concrete-frame structure, framed by black marble around the doors. The building is now occupied by the offices of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions.[2]
The first European buildings on the site were constructed in 1880,[citation needed] after several German banks joined with a local Chinese businessman to form theDeutsch-Asiatische Bank. The bank then constructed four smaller buildings on the current site. DuringWorld War I, both China and Japan declared war on Germany, and the bank lost its holdings in China. In 1919 theChina Bank of Communications took over the holdings of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank, including its properties in Shanghai.[2]
The Bank of Communications had been founded in 1908. It opened a branch in Shanghai the same year, and grew rapidly throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It made plans to construct a new headquarters on the current site, but these plans were disrupted in 1937 afterthe Japanese occupied Shanghai during theSecond Sino-Japanese War. After the Japanese surrendered in 1945 the bank returned, and completed its construction of the current building in 1948. It was the last building to be completed on the Bund before the Communists took control of Shanghai in 1949.[2]
