渤海大楼, Cultural heritage building in Tianjin, China.
The Bohai Building is an eight-storey reinforced-concrete office block, with two recessed upper floors and a square cloud pavilion on the roof, rising 47.47 metres at the corner of five former French Concession streets. Its south facade is clad in red brick with brown rough-faced tiles and vertical bands of triple windows, while the ground floor is faced in pale marble with horizontal strips of jujube-red marble.
Designed by the French firm Brossard, Mopin & Cie, the Bohai Building was financed by Prince Qing Zai Zhen and Gao Xingqiao, who had the earlier structure on the site demolished. Construction began in 1933 and finished in 1936, when it was Tianjin's tallest and most modern high-rise. Gao Xingqiao's son Gao Bohai gave it its name. In 1966 it was renamed People's Building, survived the 1976 Tangshan earthquake undamaged, and took back its name in 1979.
The name comes from Gao Bohai, son of the coal merchant Gao Xingqiao, who had the building erected with Prince Qing Zaizhen as shareholder; it was finished in 1936. After 1949 the city government turned it into a guesthouse, in 1966 it was renamed People's Building, and in 1979 it took back its name as the second branch of the Guomin Hotel. Today it houses a South Garden eHome hotel.
The building stands at the northwest corner of the five-way junction of today's Heping Road, Chifeng Road and Dandong Road in Heping District, at Heping Road 275–281. Bus stop Bohai Building and Line 3 metro station Heping Road serve it. It now operates as a South Garden eHome business hotel, so the interior is not open as a sight.
The foundation rests on square pine piles from the United States and Philippine timber, driven in a plum-blossom pattern over a rubble-concrete base. Inside, more than 90 steel columns are welded into a single frame. The building survived the 1976 Tangshan earthquake without damage.
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