Astor House: Life on the Bridge

After turning away from Broadway and crossing Soochow Creek we look back at the Garden Bridge - most photos of the era were taken from the south side of the bridge looking towards Hongkew with the buildings along the shore of the creek including the Astor House.

This first photo has no date, but it seems to be one of the first photos of the steel construction Garden Bridge with the newly installed tram lines from around 1908. Behind the right foundation of the bridge, the spire of the German Church can be seen, but between the foundation and the bridge itself, there is no sign of the modern Astor House. As the renovation and rebuilding started around 1909, this photo must be from around that time.

A rare photo from around 1915, taken from halfway across the bridge showing the continuous stream of pedestrian traffic that crossed from the Bund to Hongkew and back. The Garden Bridge has always been one of the major thoroughfares of Shanghai.

This postcard from the mid-1910s really invites the viewer to immerse themselves - I was able to scan this card at high resolution, so feel free to click through for a large version. Of note here are some of the signs we can see in the distance on the Hongkew side - there is of course the Mactavish and Lehmann Dispensary, the tram on line 10 with Rue De Vest in the French Concession as destination and to the right in the distance a billboard for Asahi Beer. I'm still unsure where this billboard actually stood on Broadway - it might actually have been hanging over the sidewalk from a telegraph pole.

Here we see a very common perspective - the Garden Bridge with the Astor House and the Russian Consulate, which also dates this photo to around 1918. This view from the southern shore of Soochow Creek has been photographed thousands of times, an attractive scene with the bridge and varied boat traffic on the water.

A rare view of the Garden Bridge from the roof of the Masonic Hall along the Bund from the mid-1920s. Around this time motor vehicle traffic in Shanghai starts to become more prevalent and here we see a motor bus going north alongside the trams.

But pedestrian traffic would never stop - there was always a need to carry goods across Soochow Creek on the back of porters, as is the case here in front of the southwest foundation of the bridge. I've never found a better version of this photo and I'm very intrigued by what this man is carrying there.

In the mid-1930s the trams crossing the bridge were carrying advertisement for Coca Cola and the tram cars seem to feature a very distinctive red (or dark blue?) and white livery. This photo from in front of the Astor House shows a massive traffic police box with traffic lights in the middle of the intersection that I haven't seen in detail on any other photos.

In 1935 the massive Broadway Mansions had been finished, towering over the bridge and replacing the low-slung buildings on the shore of the creek there, including the Mactavish pharmacy. This is also our first view of a double-decker city bus about to cross to Hongkew.

Another view of the Shanghai Mansions. This card was sent after August of 1937, as we have a clue on its reverse side...

In German: "Shanghai - Mitten auf der Bruecke die Grenze: hie japan. Besatzungsgebiet, hie internationale Conzession"

"Shanghai - The border in the middle of the bridge: Here Japanese occupational territory, here International Concession"

After the bloody Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the bridge was the only border crossing between the Japanese occupied Hongkew and the International Settlement along the Bund to the south. Japanese troops and Shanghai Volunteer Corps were facing each other at the center of the bridge and foot traffic across the bridge had to have a pass and was often subjected to brutal treatment by Japanese guards.

Here is a rare photo of the border on the bridge with the Japanese guard house on the left and a concession soldier on the right. From eye witness accounts, it seems that the concession troops on duty there were mostly from a Scottish regiment.

This arrangement lasted until 8 December 1941, when Japanese troops occupied all of Shanghai and removed the guards on the Garden Bridge.

It's very strange to think that fifty years later, on the 20th of May 1989, I would stand right there in this spot, in the center of the Garden Bridge.