Former Site of Pinghe Compressing Factory

Former Site of Pinghe Compressing Factory

The former site of Pinghe Compressing Factory is a protected cultural heritage site of Wuhan City.

The former site of Pinghe Compressing Factory is located at No. 10–12 Qingdao Road, Jiangan District. It was the earliest cotton compressing factory established in Hankou by British merchants (also handling cattle and sheep hides, feathers, ramie, etc.).

Its former site is a four-story brick-concrete building with monolithic cast-in-place floor slabs. The load-bearing and stirrup reinforcement of the frame columns is constructed similarly to that of modern buildings, indicating that the theory of reinforced concrete had already matured at the time.

The walls are built with red bricks, with pilasters dividing the spaces between windows, and the lower parts of the windows are decorated with gray cement textured finishes. The entire building is smooth, flat, simple, and durable, representing a typical example of modern industrial architecture.

The interior space is open and spacious, with column spans reaching up to about 7 meters, and the interior enjoys excellent natural lighting—quite advanced for its time.

It currently serves as a warehouse for the Municipal Commercial Storage and Transportation Company.

In 2011, the former site of Pinghe Compressing Factory was designated as a municipal-level cultural heritage protection unit.