Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China - Hankow - 1865
Cnr Tung Ting Rd & Wah Cheong Rd, British Concession.
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China was one of the great British colonial bankers in Asia and was founded by the granting of its Royal Charter in 1853. With its head office at Threadneedle Street in London, the bank opened its first branches in Bombay and Calcutta in 1857. It later opened branches in Shanghai (1857) and Hong Kong and went on to play an important role in both Indian and Chinese banking during the days of the British Empire.
A year after the British concession at Hankow was granted in 1862, a branch of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China was opened, making it the earliest Western bank in the city. The bank building, however, was not situated prominently on the Bund, as one might have expected, but it is tucked away in a parallel street within the British Concession. The reason for this anomaly may be that prior to the construction of the bund wall or dyke, those properties closest to the Yangtsze River were at the mercy of the frequent annual floods. Massive bunding construction took place in all the foreign concessions in the late 1890s and early 1900s, raising the level of the ground. Once the bunding had been completed, later arrivals like the foreign competitor banks (like the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, le Banque de L'Indochine, the Yokohama Specie Bank and the National City Bank of New York) all chose to site their grand bank buildings along the Bund, eclipsing the more modest premises of the Chartered Bank.
The bank building, however modest it may have been, featured on the reverse side of banknotes issued by the bank in 1924 for circulation in Hankow; examples of these banknotes can be seen at:-
images.goldbergauctions.com/php/lot_auc.php?site=1&sa...
english.cguardian.com/categories/coins/2013-11-29/141516....
Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China - Hankow - 1865
Cnr Tung Ting Rd & Wah Cheong Rd, British Concession.
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China was one of the great British colonial bankers in Asia and was founded by the granting of its Royal Charter in 1853. With its head office at Threadneedle Street in London, the bank opened its first branches in Bombay and Calcutta in 1857. It later opened branches in Shanghai (1857) and Hong Kong and went on to play an important role in both Indian and Chinese banking during the days of the British Empire.
A year after the British concession at Hankow was granted in 1862, a branch of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China was opened, making it the earliest Western bank in the city. The bank building, however, was not situated prominently on the Bund, as one might have expected, but it is tucked away in a parallel street within the British Concession. The reason for this anomaly may be that prior to the construction of the bund wall or dyke, those properties closest to the Yangtsze River were at the mercy of the frequent annual floods. Massive bunding construction took place in all the foreign concessions in the late 1890s and early 1900s, raising the level of the ground. Once the bunding had been completed, later arrivals like the foreign competitor banks (like the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, le Banque de L'Indochine, the Yokohama Specie Bank and the National City Bank of New York) all chose to site their grand bank buildings along the Bund, eclipsing the more modest premises of the Chartered Bank.
The bank building, however modest it may have been, featured on the reverse side of banknotes issued by the bank in 1924 for circulation in Hankow; examples of these banknotes can be seen at:-
images.goldbergauctions.com/php/lot_auc.php?site=1&sa...
english.cguardian.com/categories/coins/2013-11-29/141516....