Astor House: Japanese Neighbors

If we turn around from where we stood in our previous post about the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, we are looking at the very distinctive building of the Japanese Post Office, here in a photo from the early 1930s.

The street disappearing to the left is where Seward and Broadway merge and turn south towards the Garden Bridge. The road to the right is Tiendong Road, which goes towards the west.

We've seen this building in a previous post in a photo from 1915 in the distance and it was probably built some time around 1910, although I've never been able to verify that date.

Japan, like most colonial powers in Shanghai, had established their own postal service and there was a complex contractual network between the various postal services to allow for cooperation. Japan's first post office was founded in 1876 in an agreement with the US post master in Shanghai, George Seward - coincidentally the man Seward Road was named after.

The building has a tall cupola that can be seen in the distance in many photos of the area - a very distinctive presence in the Hongkew district.

Here we see a view down Seward Road towards the Japanese Post Office in the 1910s. Seward Road, like Broadway just around the corner, was a lively street with many small shops with an ever-changing list of owners and business types as wave after wave of immigrants made the city their own.

Nearly the same view in the 1920s, with some modernizations on the row of shops to the right.

The situation in the Hongkew district around the Astor House would deteriorate dramatically all through the 1930s, as pitched street battles between the ever-growing Japanese military presence and National Chinese and Communist Armies became ever more frequent.

This is a sequence of three photos from the "January 28th Incident" in 1932 that was taken in front of the Japanese Post Office with Japanese troops fighting off Chinese police forces. One of many incidents contributing bullet holes to the outside of the Astor House just down the street.

Here in 1937 we see the corner in one of the ever more brief periods of peace in between fights and aerial bombardments.

Up to the left beyond the post office we see the new Broadway Mansions building in the haze, completed in 1934. It stands on North Soochow Road along Soochow Creek, replacing the Mactavish & Co LTD Chemists at the corner and several buildings along that block. We will visit that location in a future post in this series.

For our next entry will stroll past the post office down along the combined Seward Road and Broadway towards the Garden Bridge.