Astor House: Up The Creek

I've been talking a lot about the Garden Bridge, but neglected to take a closer look at Soochow Creek. This channel is the result of over a thousand years of building embankments, constant dredging, rerouting and bridge building. This mostly artificial waterway connects Shanghai with Suzhou (formerly spelled Soochow), roughly 80 km away.

During colonial times the creek was an important border, first between the British and American Concessions, and then between the Japanese and the International Concession. The Astor House stands at the north end of the Garden Bridge in a key strategic position where in the 1800s and early 1900s most traffic through the city would pass.

There are many pictures of Soochow Creek near the Astor House, as nearly all visitors would arrive by boat along the Whangpoo (today Huang Pu) River and the Garden Bridge was easily visible as a landmark to orient oneself. Sooner or later, everyone would take a walk across the bridge.

I had a hard time picking photos for this post, as there are quite a lot with interesting views of life on the river.

Let's begin with a classic view across the creek in this shot of the Astor House from 1924. The building is relatively clean and soot-free from a recent bout of renovations in late 1923 and there is a lively crowd out and about on Broadway and North Soochow Road.

To the left we see the Mactavish building, but the iconic signage is obscured by foliage. To the right we see the Russian Consulate and the Garden Bridge. A huge crowd seems to be waiting for the northbound streetcar that is rolling to a stop at the very end of the bridge. Behind it we see the southbound streetcar setting out on its way to the Bund.

And in the foreground we get a good first view of life on Soochow Creek. Many of these cargo boats are at the same time the residence of the owner's family and when not hauling cargo between Suzhou and Shanghai they would dock somewhere along the shoreline of the channel. The mouth of Soochow Creek was a popular place to park the boat and wait for new business or for the tide to change.

Before we look at further photos, I would be remiss not to link to this amazing article from the New York Times from July 9th, 1933: The Busy Street That Is Soochow Creek

The photo above as well as the following ones are all from the early 1930s. This first one is a good view of how narrow the open channel between all the tied down boats was. According to the New York Times article, congestion was a permanent problem with frequent pileups and traffic jams.

This photo was apparently taken from the little tower on top of the Russian Consulate and gives a unique view of Soochow Creek from nearly above the pier of the Garden Bridge. The building with the tall clock tower on the north shore of Soochow Creek in the distance is Shanghai's General Post Office, built in 1924. The postal administration finally moved out in the early 2000s, but it still functions as a retail post office to this day.

Again a shot from the south bank of the creek from somewhere near where Yuen Ming Yuen Road meets Soochow Road. The stairs down to the creek where probably used by the Shanghai Rowing Club that had its club house at No. 2 Yuen Ming Yuen Road.

When compared with the other photos from around the same time it becomes clear how dramatically the landscape of boats on Soochow Creek could change. From nearly empty to nearly completely clogged with boats and back within weeks or months seems to have been the pattern.

This photo is from the south side of Soochow Creek at the very point where it meets the much larger Whangpoo from the shoreline along the Public Garden, so we are looking back at the Garden Bridge from the main river's side. On the very right is the Mactavish pharmacy, at the left behind the bridge's steel girders we see the tower of the General Post Office.

This postcard is signed "March 1933", so the person who bought this card was at this spot at around the same time as the New York Times reporter from the article linked above.

This last photo for today's post was taken from the spire of the Union Church on Soochow Road on the south side of the creek and across the street from the Shanghai Rowing Club.

It's tricky to date this photo, but the German Embassy seems to fly the old clean Black-White-Red merchant flag of the German Empire that was adorned with additional signets after 1918. That would narrow the date quite considerably, as the Russian Consulate was finished in 1917. So either 1918 or some time around 1922-24, since the Astor House sports the fancy glass canopy over the entrance that was added some time between 1918 and 1924.

It's worth clicking through on this photo (and also the first photo at the top of this post) - I own the original postcards and there are very large scans to really dive in. Look at all the boats and ships out on the Whangpoo, disappearing into the haze.