The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Colonialism, Power, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank
considered. The headquarters building also featured such inherently expensive
materials as stained glass for the circular windows below the dome and
marble for fireplaces in the banking hall and in the bedrooms. 17
Another way of displaying wealth was by providing a high standard
of comfort. A pendant Wenham gas burner, introduced into the colony
for the first time, was used in the banking hall to light the area. 18 Supplies
of hot and cold water were available in all bathrooms 19 —a great luxury in
the nineteenth century, particularly given the most basic problems of water
supply that other areas in Hong Kong were battling. Furthermore, each
contained a large bath, described by early newspapers as “most comfortable
looking.” 20
Political Dominance
The second characteristic of the taipans expressed in the 1886 building was
their close link with politics. The taipans had firmly established their political
legitimacy in Hong Kong by increasing their representation in the
colony’s highest administrative bodies—the Legislative Council and Executive
Council—and by influencing government officials who were allowed
to engage in private business and earn fees from hongs. 21 According to a
saying popular in the nineteenth century, Hong Kong was ruled by the
Jardines, the Jockey Club, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and the
governor, in that order of importance. 22 Although a Chinese elite gradually
emerged in Hong Kong from the 1850s onward, they were not a rival pressure
group that could challenge the influence of taipans on politics.
Since those in the merchant community had no political rivals,
they exercised their domination over the dependent group in other ways,
one of which was through architecture. It was therefore hardly surprising
that the Bank desired a headquarters building that reflected the kind of
dominance the merchant community as a whole, and the Hongkong Bank
in particular, commanded in nineteenth-century Hong Kong.
Its height was one basic way in which the Bank expressed its imposing
presence. The headquarters building was taller than nearly all other
buildings along the waterfront when it was completed in 1886; while most
were only three stories, the Hongkong Bank was four, one above the roof
line of the others. The height was further exaggerated by the central tower
that sat over the projecting entrance bay. The differential was particularly
obvious to viewers approaching the city, as in those days all came by sea: the
waterfront premises would be observed at a distance and hence read in context.
On the Queen’s Road side, the 100-foot-high dome surmounting the
banking hall, 23 together with the screen of gigantic columns wrapping
around it, dominated even the three-story buildings nearby.