Introduction to Jianghanguan Building

Jianghanguan Building is one of the landmark buildings in Wuhan. It is located at the intersection of Jianghan Road and Yanjiang Avenue. The left side is parallel to Yanjiang Avenue, and the main entrance faces east. In 1861, in accordance with Article 10 of the Sino-British Treaty of Tianjin, the British government forced the Qing government to open Zhenjiang, Jiujiang, and Hankou as foreign trade ports and set up separate customs. Hankou Customs-Jianghan Customs was established in November 1861. On November 4, 1922, the 60th anniversary of the founding of Jianghanguan, the foundation laying ceremony of the building was held, and it was completed on January 21, 1924. *** Costing 1 million taels of silver, it was designed and supervised by Yingzi Jiusheng Company and contracted by Shanghai Wei Qingji Construction Factory. This 4-story customs building is located in an area that protrudes from the river, making it easy to monitor activities on the river; at the same time, it cleverly forms a contrasting view of the two roads. The building covers an area of ​​1,499 square meters, with a construction area of ​​4,009 square meters and a total height of 46.3 meters. The top of the bell tower is 83.8 meters above the ground, making it the tallest building in Wuhan at that time. Designed by British architect Jing Ming and constructed by Hengji Construction Company, construction started in 1922 and was completed in 1924. It covers an area of ​​1,400 square meters and is about 40 meters high. The top of the bell tower is 83.8 meters above the ground. The entire building has the popular style of the European Renaissance. The main building on the ground floor is a square five-story structure. The outer walls are made of granite. The bottom wall is about 1 to 2 meters thick. The main entrance has 8 granite columns that two people can hug. There are 23 steps in front of the door, and there are 5 white marble steps on top. Level; solemn and majestic. The ground floor is a rectangular building. Next up is the 20-meter-high bell tower: the bottom floor is the big clock pendulum room, the second floor is the big clock parts room, the third floor is the big clock hour hand room, and the upper floor is the sound room composed of seven scales.

There are clock faces with a diameter of about 4 meters on all four sides of the bell tower, and the needles are 1.7 meters long. On a clear day, it can be seen ten miles away. The bells played on time and on time can also be heard for miles. The music played before liberation was "Long Live the Queen" played when the Queen of England was coronated. On the cornerstone of the building, the name of Anglian, an Englishman who served as the General Taxation Department of our country, is also engraved. The British colonists forced my country to open Hankou as a commercial port and firmly controlled the sovereignty of Hankou Customs (called Jianghan Pass at the time) everywhere. After liberation, the People's Government took over the customs and officially named it Wuhan Customs. It once replaced "Long Live the Queen" with the music "The East is Red". Wuhan Customs Building is the office building of Wuhan Customs.

On the ground floor exterior wall on the riverside side of the building, there are three bronze plaques embedded: one is the altitude of Wuhan marked by the Yangtze River Technical Committee, the writing is blurred and cannot be read; one is engraved with "August 10, the 20th year of the Republic of China The highest point of the nine-day flood was 53.65 feet", which was the highest water level when Hankou was flooded that year; another piece was engraved with "At 3:00 pm on August 18, 1954, the highest flood level was 29.73 meters (with Wu Song as the zero point)" , which was the highest water level marked by the Wuhan Water Conservancy Bureau that year. Before this building was built, the Jianghan Customs Office was located at the British Consulate in front of the Capital CPPCC Building under Jinjin Road today.