Former Site of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank

Former Site of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank

The former site of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank is a cultural relic protection unit of Jiangsu Province.

The former site of the Nanjing branch of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank during the Republican era was located at the intersection of Jiankang Road and Zhuque Road (now Taiping South Road), and is now the Chengnan Office of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, along with the Zhejiang Industrial Bank, Zhejiang Commercial Bank, and Sun Yat-sen Trust and Savings Bank, were jointly established by capitalists from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and collectively known as the “Four Southern Banks”.

The Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank was the first to be established among the “Four Southern Banks”. Its head office was founded in Shanghai in 1915; a Xiaguan office was opened in Nanjing in 1917; in July 1921, it was upgraded to a Nanjing branch; on April 10, 1933, it moved to its own building on Jiankang Road; on November 27, 1937, it relocated to Wuhan; in June 1938, it moved to Chongqing; after the victory in the War of Resistance, it resumed operations at its original location on Jiankang Road on December 15, 1945; and it ceased operations in October 1952.

The bank primarily handled deposits, loans, and remittances, and also offered savings, trust, and warehouse services. According to a June 1948 deposit survey of 14 commercial banks in Nanjing, the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank ranked first in deposit volume.

The original bank building had three stories, with a five-story corner lobby, and was constructed with a reinforced concrete structure in the European architectural style in 1933. It covered a land area of 1,139 square meters and had a floor space of 3,560 square meters. Around the 1980s or 1990s, an additional floor was added to the original three-story structure, making it four stories high with the corner lobby remaining at five stories. The current layout of the building largely retains its original form.

On December 19, 2011, the People’s Government of Jiangsu Province designated it as part of the seventh batch of provincial-level cultural relic protection units.

Further Reading:

· Seventh Batch of Provincial Cultural Relic Protection Units in Jiangsu Province