The Shen Family Ancestral Hall in Luzhi

The Shen Family Ancestral Hall in Luzhi

The Shen Family Ancestral Hall in Luzhi is a Suzhou Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The ancestral hall is located to the west of the former site of the Wansheng Rice Shop in Luzhi Town. After the liberation, the hall was converted into a warehouse for the grain management office. The Shen Family Ancestral Hall is the largest and most well-preserved existing family ancestral hall in Suzhou. It consists in sequence of a screen wall, an entrance hall, a front hall, a rear hall, auxiliary rooms, and a residential building.

The front hall is seven bays wide, measuring 25.6 meters, with a depth of 11.4 meters, featuring an inner four-bay structure with a front double-eave corridor and a rear double-step frame. The front corridor is a single-zhi-xiang crane-neck corridor, and the inner corridor is a boat-roof corridor. The east auxiliary room of the front hall is three bays wide, 8.8 meters, with a depth of 8.6 meters, featuring an inner four-bay structure with a front single step and a rear double step. The auxiliary room includes a west side chamber, 3.15 meters wide and 5.3 meters deep. The rear hall is six bays wide, 21.3 meters, with a depth of 7.9 meters, featuring an inner four-bay structure with three steps in the front and a single step in the rear, using round timber and raised-beam construction. The east auxiliary room of the rear hall is three bays wide, 6.26 meters, with a depth of eight rafters (6.8 meters), using round timber and through-tenon construction. The residential building on the west side of the rear hall is three bays wide, 6.5 meters, with a depth of five frames (5.9 meters), featuring a domed roof structure.

In July 2009, the Shen Family Ancestral Hall was listed as part of the sixth batch of Suzhou Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Units.