כךלערדר
ENTRANCE LOBBY
DFFICES
AIR-CONDITIONING PLANT
YARD
BANKING
CASH VAULT
F
JFT LUDTORS PUMPS 4.
BAGK
MESS
E
PERTA PUDOR LEVEL
ALDER LEVEL.
BOTH FLOOR LEVEL
19TH ALDOA LIÊVÉL-
SETH PLCÓN VINIL
E
$
10TH FLOOR LEVEL.
C
€
5
4TH FLOOR LIMIL-
n
F
I
C
E
-TIN RÓC. L
E
$
CATH ROSE LEVĒL
t
C
E
5
-S IN FLOOR LIVE.
C
E
$
4TH PLOCK LEVEL:
C
E
*
F
C
E
5
HALL
E
5
WORKING SPACE
ACCOUNTANT
LANDING WAITING SPACE,
SAFE DEPOSIT
Longitudinal section through the building.
Sukares
CARLING
SPACE
LE ALTENST
FEAT.
300x
YAULT
LIFE
*
MOUNTIES
WEATHER
C
L
LIFT LOBBY
LANONG
MAIN LOBBY
(Above) Ground floor plan and (Below) Second floor plan.
MANAGER'S OFFICE
OFFICE
COMTAN.
story by Sir Compton Mackenzie of the Chartered Bank during its one hundred years of existence.
The Chartered Bank was founded during a period of economic and political crisis. The Crimean War was raging at the time and it was not until 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny and of a resurgence of the the Yangtze Taiping Rebellion in the Valley, that the Bank was able to send officers to the East to open the first branches in
and Calcutta
Shanghai in 1858.
more
In the summer of 1859 a branch of the Chartered Bank was opened in Hong Kong, where it got off to a
start favourable
than the others and by the end of 1865 the Bank's standing was high and in spite of strong competition it was able to operate with profit.
When, during the 'sixties and 'seventies of the 19th century. Hong Kong became the entrepot of the trade of the China Coast, the grow- ing British mercantile communities living in the Treaty Ports sought to sever the link which connected the China Trade with India. As a result, many new British financial and com- mercial institutions based upon Hong Kong and Shanghai came into exis- tence to engage not only in the ex- ternal trade of China but in the do- mestic trade also. There was a time when the Chartered Bank may have been at a disadvantage because its Directors declined to embark upon a policy of territorial specialisation, but the shape of things to come in Southern and Eastern Asia now leaves very little doubt of the per- spicuity of that decision.
During the next quarter of a cen- tury the Bank's Hong Kong branch prospered with the ever-growing prosperity of the Colony itself, and at Shanghai business showed a great improvement on the discouraging re- sults achieved by the branch in its early stages.
By 1895, after a not too auspicious start, the Chartered Bank's branches in Hong Kong and Shanghai were firmly established and held in high esteem by the mercantile community in the Far East.
The Chartered Bank in Hong Kong was started in premises situated in the neighbourhood of what is now Chinese Street, near the Central Market and abutting on Des Voeux Road. The reclamation of this area,
everywhere, its original name, its institution and its service to have which was completed in 1904, had original constitutional form and, let engendered а tradition" said Sir the effect of moving Des Voeux Road it be emphasized, its complete inde- William R. Cockburn, then Chief inland, and it may be presumed that pendence. The Bank may now per- General Manager of the Bank in his the Bank's first office in Hong Kong haps justly claim to have become an preface to "Realms of Silver" the was on the waterfront.
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