Panyu Road a journey into city's architectural past

An appealing neighborhood hidden among thriving sycamore trees, Panyu Road in the southeast of Changning District guides even a fresh visitor to approach some essence of Shanghai: such as the architectural relics left behind by László Hudec, the modern adaptation of Columbia Country Club into a cultural and tourism site, and the cozy lane of Xing Fu Li with its wisps of aromas of coffee and bread.

The road was originally part of vast farmland before the 1920s. In 1925 the municipal council administering concessions in Shanghai built the road crossing its contracted borders and named it "Columbia Avenue" after the city in the United States.

It was renamed Panyu, after Panyu County in Guangdong Province, in October 1943, though some senior residents call it "Fanyi Road" due to phonetic influence by their dialect and the polyphonic Chinese character "fan/pan" (番).

Panyu Road is now a north-south secondary trunk road that runs past Changning and Xuhui districts. It starts from Huaihai Road W. in the south and stretches 1,240 meters to reach Yan'an Road W. in the north, with Fahuazhen and Xinhua roads cutting through it in the middle.

Lanes 55, 75 and 95 on Panyu Road and 2-18 Pingwu Road are nicknamed Foreign Lanes. They used to mainly accommodate European and American residents.

The 21 joint villas are part of the "Columbia Circle" compound designed by a group of architects lead by Hudec in then west outskirts of Shanghai in the 1930s.

In 1924 the turf battle between warlords of Jiangsu and Zhejiang for Shanghai broke out. The next year the municipal council administering concessions of Shanghai built two roads: Avenue Amherest, now Xinhua Road, and Columbia Avenue, to expand its territory.

Frank J. Raven, an American engineer, and his Asia Realty Co instantly purchased some hectares of land along the two roads. The lands were divided into more than 70 rectangular blocks commonly seen in the United States for further realty development, with each calculated between 1 to 2 mu (667-1,333 square meters).

Hugo Sandor, a Hungarian executive manager of Asia Realty Co, appointed his compatriot Hudec as chief architect for the design of garden villas in Columbia Circle.

Construction was completed between 1929 and 1932 and sales were exuberant.

A design chart for villas in Columbia Circle in 1930 shows ten different styles on offer: British, Italian, Spanish, Sacramento, Californian, Colonial, Floridian, San Diego, Hollywood and British Countryside.

The villas appealed to expats with a nostalgia for their homelands.

A branch of the Medieval Gothic style, British Countryside was revived during the Gothic Revival movement in Britain in the 1740s. The category was popular in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s.

Satisfying a desire for a pastoral life away from the urban bustle, British Countryside ranked top among the top choices of upper-class expats choosing to make Shanghai their home.

Walkers of Panyu Road can still glimpse of the past glamor of the garden villas, such as at 2-18 Pingwu Road. The three-storied buildings have double sloping red roofs. Their roof windows are upward shed and the wall surfaces cement-coated. Each villa's courtyard sits in the north and is fenced by a low wall.

Architect's third home

Not far from the Foreign Lanes is 129 Panyu Road, Hudec's former residence.

It was the architect's third home in Shanghai, or the second last.

He spent seven years in the house, where he accomplished his bold and innovative designs of the Grand Theater, the Park Hotel, and the Green House, among others.

The residence with towering chimneys and steep roofs is the British Tudor style, most favored by his wife Giselle Meyer. It also reminded Hudec of his hometown of Besztercebánya, where he was born on January 8, 1893 to a Czechoslovakian father and a Hungarian mother.

His father was responsible for building the first electrified subway in Continental Europe in Budapest.

Hudec started his apprenticeship with his father on construction from the age of 9. He gained professional certificates in carpentry, plastering and masonry before he entered college.

He enrolled in the Hungary Royal Joseph Polytechnic University in 1910 at 17 as an architect major, four years before the first World War broke out.

Hudec served in the Austro-Hungarian Army but was captured by the Russians in 1916.

Relying on a fake Russian passport, he escaped from Siberia in 1918 to Harbin in China, and finally reached Shanghai.

The Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed after WWI. Bankrupted, his father died in 1920. Hudec restarted his life in the burgeoning oriental city of Shanghai.

His architectural achievements in Shanghai were marvelous.

"The buildings designed by László Hudec were the past, the present, and will always be a highlight of Shanghai's cityscape," renowned architect I.M. Pei once said.

In 1929 Hudec accomplished a near-Spanish style building along Columbia Avenue, which he intended for his own family.

At the time there were cash flow difficulties related to his Moore Memorial Church project.

Thanks to financial support from Sun Ke (1891-1973), the son of the pioneer of Chinese democratic revolution Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), Hudec settled the crisis.

Sun was then president of the National Jiao Tong University, now Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where Hudec was involved in designing its campus.

To show his gratitude, Hudec sold the new villa to Sun at a very low price.

Sun Ke's Villa at 22 Columbia Avenue, or 60 Panyu Road, covers 1,051 square meters. It is three-storied, with a furnaced sitting-room in the middle and a study and a dining room on both sides. The central fa?ade is pointed-arched, and the right and left of the fa?ade are circular-arched. Accordingly, the central windows on the second floor are round arched, and those on the left and right are rectangular. Detailed decorations include roof windows, an octagonal tower and chiseled cement walls.

In 1930, Hudec purchased another plot of land opposite Columbia Avenue, and built his third home, 57 Columbia Avenue, now 129 Panyu Road.

The Hudec family left Shanghai for Europe in 1947. On his departure, he took the wooden door and a drafting table from his residence at 57 Columbia Avenue.

Expats accounted for the majority of residents in the Columbia Circle compound at first. They were merchants, bankers, doctors and even fashion designers.

One resident who became a celebrity later was British writer J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), whose novel "Empire of the Sun" was adapted for the screen in the 1980s by Steven Spielberg.

The Ballard family were residents of 100 Avenue Amherest, now 508 Panyu Road, in the 1930s.

Both the Columbia Country Club, the Navy Club and Sun Ke's Villa form today's Columbia Circle urban space 上生?新所.

The property at 150 Columbia Avenue, now 326 Panyu Road, used to be the residence of the Shanghai branch general manager of American Palmolive Soap Co, which in 1928 was merged with Colgate and renamed as Colgate-Palmolive in 1953.

The now 215 Panyu Road used to be dormitories for British team monitors for Kailuan coal mines, the Kaiping and Luanzhou coal mines in Hebei Province.

In addition to its legacy from Hudec, Panyu Road also offers a good resting place for a cup of coffee and some desserts for visitors in its Xing Fu Li art, design and leisure space.