“The old red and gray brick buildings, which stood for many years at the corner of Love Lane and Chinghai Roads, and which were demolished earlier this year, are being replaced by this finely laid out property, for which the design is by Messrs. Davies, Brooke and Gran. The corner of the site will be developed as shops with living quarters above, and to the south will be a large residence, garden and outhouses. On the left is seen the roof of an entertainment pavilion, with a large conservatory in the background.“ — Shanghai Sunday Times, December 1935.
“To the northeast of the block, a low-rise hospital complex occupies a prominent corner. The original house was built in 1936 as the home to real estate entrepreneur Zhou Xiangyun [周湘云] who was originally from Ningbo. With a flat roof and ribbon windows, the house was a reinforced concrete structure with many of the then latest infrastructural amenities, including a small lift for the three-story house and plumbing fixtures. It had been designed by Davies, Brooke, and Gran Architects. With the plaque of Villa Bayankara still visible at the entrance, the house was also home to one of Shanghai's first cars, which was given the license plate 001, being the first to be issued [in fact, Zhou owned the first car back in 1902 and obviously not at this house –– KK]. In 1943 when he died, Zhou was listed fifth in the tax roster of the Concession-era Municipal Council. The house was recorded as given to the government in 1965, though in reality it had already been occupied in 1950 by the Department for Foreign Trade's Huadong Bureau [华东局], a high-ranking part of the CCP bureaucracy. When the bureau vacated the house, Yueyang Hospital [岳阳医院] took over the building and grounds. Like the former Qiu residence that became Minli Middle School, it is also a modern era garden-style house selected as Excellent Historic Architecture by the gazetting of 1999. But with its hybrid Western and Chinese architectural details of arches and colonnades, it is a contrast to the ivy-grown red-bricked ambiance of the former Qiu residence. Architect pundits who were proliferating in the early 2000s, described the house as neoclassical. The former Zhou residence would later be cataloged under the international modern style.” — Ying Zhou, Urban Loopholes. Creative Alliances of Spatial Production in Shanghai's City Center (2017), 293–294.
“Directly to the north of the hospital is a six-story office complex, the Mayflower Commercial Building [五月花商务楼], built in 1996. — Zhou, Urban Loopholes, 294.
Zhou Xiangyun’s property, shown in the drawing below, consisted of a commercial building on the corner (“Mayflower Building”) and a residence to the south (Villa Bayankara), consisting of the main mansion, a service building, an ancestral hall, a conservatory and an entertainment pavilion.
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Bayankara (Bayan Har; 巴颜喀拉山) is a mountain range in Northwest China, Qinghai Province. The name of the villa is, probably, a play off the name of the street, Chinhai (Qinghai) Road, on which it stands.
The client – the real estate tycoon Zhou Xiangyun – enlisted his compradore nephew Li Jinghan to oversee the construction of the residence. Li spared no expense to hire a top-level architect (Emmanuel Gran) and commission most technologically and stylistically advanced buildings. With the total spending of 400,000 French francs, the client’s son, Zhou Changsan, reportedly chided his cousin for spending the equivalent of the cost of Cathay Hotel (Sassoon House) on the Bund. a
The facade of the main mansion, faced with greenish glazed brick, has a staggered shape emphasizing horizontal lines. The flat roof is surrounded by a parapet wall; it can be reached by an internal elevator, which was a rare feature for a low-rise property. The overall style, including the cylindrical sun parlor extruding from the corner, is similar to Dr. Woo’s residence on the corner of Avenue and Hardoon Roads, designed by L. E. Hudec in 1935.
The mansion is extended from east to west, with the principal facade facing south, toward the garden and the hall for ancestral worship at its southern end. The garden had a traditional Chinese layout and contained two sprawling camphor trees, evergreens, small bridges, flowing water, gnarled rocks and winding paths. To the north of the mansion there is a rectangular service building, with a separate entrance and a back patio. A long corridor connects all the rooms in the service building. There is also a gatehouse on the property, connected to the main mansion with an intercom.
The main mansion has 52 rooms. The entrance hall is reached by a central revolving door, a fashionable feature at the time. The electric rolling door was operated by a button hidden behind the plaque with a mountain view. Upon entry, to right of the wide vestibule is the reception room and to the left is the dining room; at the end there is the back hall. The right wall of the vestibule has a built-in clock in a stained glass round window, which continues to work accurately to this day.
Stairs on both sides of the vestibule lead to the living room upstairs. The master bedroom faces south and has a round sun room and a glazed terrace connecting to another bedroom and another living room.
The built-in wall clock, the elevator and the electric roll-up doors are only some of the advanced technological contraptions filling the house. Besides flush toilets, already widespread at that time, there are pedal-operated self-rinsing spittoons in the corridors, sand-filtered tap water and a movable bar behind a small door on the ground floor. There are three secret safes in the master bedroom, and two master keys opening all the doors in the house. The craftsmanship and the materials are of extremely high grade and include Belgian stained glass, French chandeliers, and imported Italian marble floors.
Zhou Xiangyun died in 1943 but his family continued living on the property until the end of the 1940s. The multiple rooms in the mansion served to exhibit Zhou’s extensive collection of Chinese antiques and art. Soon after the establishment of the Communist regime in 1949, the East China Bureau of the Department for Foreign Trade rented the building. Later it passed to Fifth Public Medical Clinic and eventually to Yueyang Hospital’s clinic, which continues to occupy it to this day.
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The “Mayflower Building” (originally not called that) housed Van’s Dutch Village Inn, which moved from a nearby location on Bubbling Well Road in 1936. In 1939 the owner A. H. F. van Herwijnen sold the business to Fred Stern, who remodeled the space and opened the Café Europe. In 1941 the business became May Flower Restaurant 美华酒楼, which stayed open through the 1940s. In 1996, a new 6-story commercial building, 五月花商务楼, was built on the footprint of the original one (perhaps as add-on floors?).
“Villa Bayankara and other hidden landmarks off West Nanjing Road” https://avezink.livejournal.com/313983.html
“Emmanuel Gran’s project on Chinhai Road” https://avezink.livejournal.com/302037.html
Ying Zhou, Urban Loopholes. Creative Alliances of Spatial Production in Shanghai's City Center (2017).
青海路44号——隐藏在深处的豪宅: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/5vPcFtaPxnNB9HO_WU4y7w