Initially known as Commercial Bank of China (1934).

Development Building completes the circus on the intersection of Kiangse (Jiangxi) Road and Foochow (Fuzhou) Road, started by the two twin buildings, Metropole Hotel and Hamilton House. Both of them were designed by the architects of Palmer and Turner when Emmanuel Gran was still working at the firm. Having joined Davies and Brooke as the third partner in 1932, Gran designed the headquarters of the Commercial Bank of China (Development Building), constructed in 1934. Among the engineers working on the site was Nicholas Neckludoff, whose photographic archive includes the documentations of the construction.

“...Three lofty buildings, their ascending towers and stepped outline reminiscent of Manhattan’s Gothic piles in miniature. Concave floor plans set each tower back from the street to create an atmosphere of watchful intensity; the device in deference to the incurvate entrance to the Municipal Offices designed by Robert Charles Turner (1875–1950) and completed in 1922 that occupied the fourth corner of the intersection. The ambiance generated by this quartet of concave facades is gratifyingly arresting, opening up the streetscape to dramatic effect, though the looming towers overlooking the circus are intimidating in equal measure.

“The tallest building was designed by the architectural firm Davies, Brooke & Gran for the Commercial Bank of China and built by the Metropolitan Land Company. The top of the tower rises to 19 storeys, while the wings descend in stages from the 13th to the 11th floors. The concept drawings for the buildings suggest a deliberately dramatized series of staggered rectilinear solids rising to their natural pinnacle at the top of the central tower, placed symmetrically in the overall composition. All surface detailing has been stripped bare, leaving only the vertical lines ascending from the base to the top of each stepped portion of the building to emphasize the building’s elevated character.” — Edward Denison, Modernism in China: Architectural Visions and Revolutions (2008), pp. 176–177.

“The urban ‘dialogue’ which began with the classically flavoured Art Deco, was completed with the Modernist tower rising four storeys higher than its neighbors. While the form and massing emulated the Art Deco twins across the square, gone is any superfluous decoration.

”A perspective of the new bank appeared in the 1935 edition of The China Architects and Builders Compendium, edited by JTW Brooke, a partner in the architectural firm designing the building. It illustrates a soaring building, with vertical window strips alternating with rendered panels, all rising to infinity without any restrictive capping. The New York scene is complete with suited figures and waiting limousine. The reality was close to the perspective.

”The completed municipal square reflected the architectural dynamism of the period. Within 14 years the architectural styles had moved from a baroque influenced classicism to Art Deco and finally Modernism, shedding ornament along the way.” — Anne Warr, Shanghai Architecture (2007), p. 63.