The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part I: Filters
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Shirley Wong
could prove politically advantageous. 43 Furthermore, the British government
had deposited with the Bank the Treasury chest: the fund for payments
to government employees at the consular ports in China and Japan.
The Bank therefore had ample silver coins to make short-term loans at a
high rate of interest to provincial authorities in China. 44 Income also came
from the Bank’s branches worldwide, whose opening coincided with a period
of unprecedented expansion of the British Empire in Asia. There were
seventeen such branches by 1883, all at ports connected with China trade,
some of which were British colonies. 45
The Hongkong Bank was not just a local bank serving local merchants.
Its biggest “client” in the loan business was imperial China, and its
strongest ally was the British government. The headquarters building physically
expressed this link with the empire by its classical architectural style,
which would be readily perceived as bearing an imperial imprint. When
finished in 1886, it was more elaborate, both in form and in level of detailing,
than any government building in Hong Kong. After all, the government
buildings represented only the British administration in the colony of
Hong Kong, whereas the headquarters building manifested in its built form
the political ambition of the British Empire toward China.
Within the next hundred years, two more new Hongkong Bank
headquarters were built on the same site. Featuring neoclassical composition
and art deco motifs, the 1935 headquarters was described by the local
press as “the most dramatic and successful skyscraper in the East.” 46 The
1986 headquarters received worldwide attention for its high-tech image
and its exceptionally high cost. The analytical framework used to examine
the 1886 headquarters can also be applied to the 1935 and the 1986 headquarters.
Collectively, the three headquarters show the developing relationship
between colonialism and built form over time; changes in their
built form reflect changes in the nature of colonialism and in power relations
at every level. The 1886 headquarters building is but the first stage
of this process.