Chung Hwa Bank Headquarters and History Museum Introduction
The Changhua Bank Headquarters located at the intersection of Taiwan Boulevard and Freedom Road in Taichung was built during the Japanese occupation in the Showa period. The building features a neoclassical architectural style reminiscent of ancient Greek and Roman colonnades, with a majestic exterior and exquisite craftsmanship, making it a famous landmark in Taichung. It has been designated as a municipal historic site and is one of the earliest banks in Taiwan established with private funding, holding significant cultural and historical value for preservation and research. To this day, it continues to serve as the operating branch of the Changhua Headquarters, with a historical museum on the second floor that preserves historical documents from that era, available for visits by reservation. During the Qing dynasty, the issue of dual land ownership was severe. The Governor-General's Office implemented a massive public bond scheme to address rental rights issues, but due to poor compensation conditions, it was not well-received by the public, leading to widespread selling for cash. To maintain the credibility of the public bonds, one approach was to send personnel to buy bonds, while the other was to encourage local individuals to leverage public bonds for business ventures. Against this historical backdrop, in 1905, Wu Ru-xiang from Changhua called together local gentries from central Taiwan to raise a capital of 220,000 yen for rent compensation and established the "Changhua Bank Co., Ltd." in Changhua. Lu Gang's Gu Xian-rong was also elected as a supervisor. Subsequently, due to environmental needs, the bank was relocated to Taichung City, becoming one of the few large commercial banks in Taiwan with its headquarters located in central Taiwan. The new headquarters was built in 1936 and is the current Changhua Bank Headquarters in Taichung, designed by Hōfu Bai and Kizaburō Hatakeyama in a classical Western architectural style. The elegant carved decorations, round concrete pillars, and sturdy iron doors, along with the high interior space design, showcase the aesthetic of bank architecture of the time. After Taiwan's restoration, the National Government took over the shares of original Japanese stakeholders. In 1947, Lin Xian-tang was elected as chairman, and it was reorganized as "Changhua Commercial Bank," transitioning from a government and private joint-stock bank to a privately owned one in 1998. In the garden near Freedom Road, there stands a bronze statue of Lin Xian-tang, which is worth a visit.
