Astor House: Looking Into Broadway?

We've taken another step back in time, to - most likely - 1912 and our photographer stood in the middle of the north end of the Garden Bridge for this shot. The artist colorizing the photo was rather generous with their brush and the postcard has a nearly painterly appearance.

The Astor House on the right had been re-opened late in 1911, now in its final physical form along the waterfront.

For a brief period after the opening, there was a "BUFFET" sign over the entrance to the bar and buffet at the southwest corner, but that was later removed in the mid-1910s. Otherwise the hotel looks similar to our previous photo.

This is our first look down Seward Road - or Broadway as the postcard states. Maps from the era disagree on the name of the block just north of the Garden Bridge, splitting evenly between "Seward Road" and "Broadway". Personally I believe this is the first block of Seward Road, since that continues nearly in a straight line from here. Broadway turns towards the east from here.

We actually do see a few meters of the proper Broadway in the distance. Just past the grey four-story building next to the Astor House there is a thin sliver of a building with a short spire visible - that is the Hong Kong & Shanghai Branch Bank at the very beginning of Broadway as it forks off Seward Road and passes behind the block of the Astor House.

The building on the west (left) side of Seward Road with a green cupola and spire is the Japanese Post Office, which we will see closer in some future posts. It's unclear whether the building already served as the Japanese Post Office in the 1910s, but by 1932 - as Japanese control expanded north of Suzhou Creek - it was known by that name.

On the left we get a good look of the Mactavish & Co LTD Chemists, which will become the Mactavish and Lehmann Dispensary by the 1920s. The letters of the sign over the door "DRUG STORE" always felt oddly modern to me, but I actually have some later photos that were not hand colorized that show the same sign.

The street scene is notable for being car free with only pedestrians and some rickshaws. The people on the left are most likely waiting for the street car, and the next tram is visible in the distance, just about to pass the Japanese Post Office building. The street cars are still very new and were introduced to Seward Road after the Garden Bridge was completed in 1908.

For our next photo, we are going to walk halfway across North Soochow Road on the left and another decade further into the past.