Yates Apartments, Art Deco residential building in Jing'an District, China.
Yates Apartments is a nine-storey, crescent-shaped modernist apartment block at the junction of West Nanjing Road and Shimen No. 1 Road in Jing'an District, Shanghai. Completed in 1936, it has a reinforced concrete frame, dark brown facing bricks and facades that stress horizontal lines. Its wedge-shaped site, bounded by three streets, led to a compact point layout with small flats.
Built with funds from the Bank of China in 1935, the building was designed by Lu Qian (Luke Him Sau) and Wu Jingqi and completed in 1936 by the Dachang Construction Company. It served as the Bank of China's West District Branch and was named after Tongfu Road, today's Shimen Yi Road. In 1994 it was listed among the second batch of Shanghai's Outstanding Historical Buildings.
The name comes from Tongfu Road, today's Shimen No. 1 Road, where the building stands. Its ground floor and basement housed the Bank of China's western branch; the upper floors held one two-, three- and four-room flat each. Since 1994 it has been listed among Shanghai's outstanding historic buildings.
The building stands at the corner of West Nanjing Road and Shimen No. 1 Road, with Wujiang Road along its third side; the nearest metro stop is West Nanjing Road station. The ground floor now houses the Shimen No. 1 Road branch of ICBC, and the upper floors remain rented apartments, so visits are limited to the exterior.
The triangular plot, hemmed in by West Nanjing Road, Shimen No. 1 Road and Wujiang Road, forced a compact point-block plan; rooms were so small that the design drew criticism when the building opened. The ground floor and basement housed the Bank of China, while floors two to nine held one two-, one three- and one four-room flat each.
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