Stability and elegance combine to make the new premises of the Russo-Chinese Bank, which were opened on Monday at Shanghai one of the most imposing on the Bund. With its handsomely-square exterior, everyone has been familiar for months past, as it has gradually grown up from its foundation.—Latterly, curiosity as to what may be behind the iron-barred grand entrance and the equally girded windows has been stimulated by the lights from the lofty verandah at night. A representative of this journal was recently privileged to go round the building in company with Mr. Richard Seel, the architect, and Mr. H. Becker, under whose superintendence the erection has been carried out. Mr. Seel was the architect for the Japanese Government buildings at Tokio, the Oriental Hotel, and several big villas on the Bluff in Yokohama, and has been engaged in the East for 14 years.
The new Bank is in the Italian Ren: sauce style and is in three main stories. OF these the principal is the central, where the great business hall is situated at the top of a grand flight of marble stairs. Not to fatigue customers by an over-long climb, the apartments on the ground floor are not so loftily pitched as the great rooms above, but in order that the entrance may not lose in dignity, is supported by the two carved groups representing Industry and Commerce respectively, which make an appropriate finish to the stately front of Soochow granite. The effect is to mark out the entrance without hesitation and to direct customers, once through the portal, past the lower apartments immediately to the stairway and the grand hall above. A glance upward in entering may be taken at the carved figure heads, a Chinaman flanked by two Russians, which further ornament the facade. It may be noted further, in passing, that the lower entrance corridor is nobly pillared with a substitute for African marble. On the right of this corridor, immediately inside, isa large room devoted to the Russian Volunteer Fleet, and, on the left another similar, where' archives will be stored. Behind' these are respectively the office for the custodian and the lavatory, and at the rear of these again two dungeon-like but highly-important rooms. That on the right-hand side of the stairway is the lock-up for all the books of the bank, Needless to say it is lined with fire-proof bricks and is closed by safe-doors of the most massive iron. The books will be lowered from the floor above by means of electric lift, to which they can be carried on rolling tables, so that no coolie ill ever be called upon to handle the volumes.
'The companion dungeon on the left marks a new departure in the bank's undertakings. Tt is tobe 'a deposit-room for customers' valuables, which will be locked up in separate lockers, each requiring two keys to One of the keys will be retained by the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.