Shanghai Municipal Museum, Municipal museum in central Shanghai, China

The Shanghai Municipal Museum opened in 1937 in a building on Changhai Road in Jiangwan, designed by Dong Dayou and Wang Huabin. The 3,430-square-metre structure has an H-shaped plan, a central gate tower modelled on Beijing's Drum Tower with a double-eaved roof of yellow glazed tiles, and outer walls 10.5 metres high. Inside were a 100-seat library, a 300-seat lecture hall, and exhibition rooms lit by glass skylights.

Planned under the 1929 Greater Shanghai Plan, the museum was funded by 300,000 yuan of a 3.5 million yuan municipal bond and opened for trial operation on 10 January 1937 in Jiangwan. Shelled during the Battle of Shanghai, it closed for eight years; in 1946 it reopened at 1844 North Sichuan Road as the Shanghai Municipal Museum, and in June 1949 became the Shanghai History Museum.

The museum's name changed with the city: opened in 1937 as the Shanghai Museum, it became the Shanghai Municipal Museum in 1946 and the Shanghai History Museum in June 1949. Its historical gallery traced Shanghai's urban past, while the art gallery showed bronzes, ceramics, seals, coins and sculpture. In its first half-year it mounted six exhibitions, among them Chinese architecture and Hainan Li and Miao folk objects.

The 1936 Jiangwan building faces west and is now the imaging department of Changhai Hospital; its original single-storey side wings were later raised to two floors and windows were added to the upper floor for light. The 1994 listing as a Shanghai Excellent Historic Building covers the exterior, so visitors look at the facade and plan rather than exhibition rooms.

In 1948 the museum learned that dealers planned to smuggle antiquities to the United States; its press campaign led to the seizure of 17 crates bound for New York, among them the bronze xizun vessel excavated at Liyu village, Hunyuan, Shanxi, now in the Shanghai Museum.