ARCHITECTURE.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Architectural blueprints for commercial, cultural, and residential projects. An appealing collection, highlighting the role of foreign finance and architectural expertise in the modernization of Republican China's major commercial centres. The blueprints show business premises, Western-style houses and apartments, and a theatre. Seven were issued by the architectural firm of Henry Charrey and Marcel Conversy. Based in Jinan, the firm was employed from 1918 by the Belgian-French company Crédit Foncier d'Extrême-Orient, which financed and oversaw construction in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and other cities with a foreign presence. In Jinan, Charrey & Conversy were involved in the laying out of a new post office compound and designing Western-style houses. Also present are blueprints for offices for the Danish outfit Andersen, Meyer & Co., which arrived in the city in 1916, and a hong for the Asiatic Petroleum Company.A second group relates to the Tianjin civil engineers Brossard, Mopin & Co. Founded in 1910, it specialized in buildings made with reinforced concrete. A large plan shows the imposing front face of a proposed building for the Gongxian Arsenal, one of China's main manufacturers of weaponry and ammunition. In Tianjin, Brossard, Mopin also contracted for apartments and a new theatre and clubhouse for the China Theatre Company, the floorplans here accompanied by textual overviews of the projects.Accompanying these two groups are a 1919 plan of Tsinghua University, Beij

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