Former Site of the Exhibition Hall of the Nanjing Geological Survey Institute

Former Site of the Exhibition Hall of the Nanjing Geological Survey Institute

The former site of the Exhibition Hall of the Nanjing Geological Survey Institute is a cultural heritage site protected at the provincial level in Jiangsu Province.

The former site of the Exhibition Hall of the Nanjing Geological Survey Institute is located at the Nanjing Geological Museum, 700 Zhujiang Road, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province.

This museum is one of the oldest geological exhibition halls in China. In 1913, at the initiative of Zhang Hongzhao, he, together with Ding Wenjiang, Weng Wenhao, and others, founded a geological institute in Beijing, recruiting students with the intention of training newcomers in the field of geology. Given the aggressive advances of Japanese invaders at the time, Weng Wenhao actively lobbied and planned for the relocation of both the survey institute and the exhibition hall to the south.

In 1933, under the planning and fundraising efforts led by Weng Wenhao, a plot of land then known as Crystal Terrace (now the area from the Nanjing Geological Museum to the Nanjing Panda Electronics Group) was purchased to construct the exhibition hall building and library facilities. After completion in August 1935, the Beiping Geological Survey Institute relocated to Nanjing and was renamed the Central Geological Survey Institute. The newly built exhibition building housed the Geological and Mineral Exhibition Hall.

The main building is a four-story structure in German architectural style, designed by the renowned Chinese architect Tong ?, with a construction area of over two thousand square meters. It features a reinforced concrete structure, a symmetrical layout, red brick facades, and regularly patterned designs.

The main building houses offices on the ground and fourth floors, while the second and third floors are exhibition rooms. By the eve of the War of Resistance Against Japan, there were twelve exhibition rooms established, including those dedicated to geological structures, minerals, rocks, minerals, fuels, agricultural geology, geologic history, paleontology, as well as Peking Man and prehistoric culture. The display cabinets and shelves in each exhibition room were designed according to the size and height of the specimens, resulting in a novel, aesthetically pleasing, and uniquely styled presentation. The exhibitions featured a large number of paleontological fossils, mineral ores, rock specimens, among which the notable ones included large dinosaur and rhinoceros fossils, and massive crystals. After opening, visitors flocked to the museum, and Soong Mei-ling and Li Dequan (wife of Feng Yuxiang) made special visits to the museum.

In 1937, the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan forced the museum, along with the Geological Survey Institute, to undertake a long and arduous relocation journey inland—to Changsha, Hunan, and later to Beibei, Chongqing. After the war, in 1946, the museum returned to its original location in Nanjing from Chongqing. Through concerted efforts, exhibitions were eventually resumed. In 1956, when the national geological ministry began constructing a national geological museum in Beijing, some staff members and specimens from the museum were dispatched to support the Beijing museum’s development. In early 1992, the Nanjing Geological Exhibition Hall was renamed the Nanjing Geological Museum and came under the administration of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Geology and Mineral Resources.

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Heritage Protection Units