Charles Henry Gonda (22 June 1889 – 1 April 1969), professionally known as C. H. Gonda, was a Hungarian architect famous for his ultra-modern style of building. He was active in Shanghai throughout the 1920s–1940s and began working on his first project, the Messrs, Lane, Crawford & Co's New Frontage building, in 1922 after leaving his previous firm Probst, Hanbury & Co.. Among his largest extant works are the Capitol Theatre (光陆大戏院), Sun Sun Department Store (新新公司), Cathay Theatre (国泰电影院), the Bank of East Asia (东亚银行) and the Bank of Communications (交通银行).
Biography Early life
C. H. Gonda was born in Gyöngyös, Austro-Hungary as Károly Goldstein, the younger son in a family of the Jewish merchant Henrik Goldstein and the housewife Róza Balkányi. In 1902, the Goldsteins changed their surname to Gonda to make it sound more Hungarian. Following the death of Henrik, the family moved to Vienna, where Károly finished his secondary education and his older brother Aurel started working as a doctor. In 1908, Károly Gonda enrolled at the Technical College of Vienna's School of Architecture but dropped out during the summer semester of 1914. He made his way to Paris, where he likely received a diploma from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and later apprenticed in London for about a year.
When the First World War broke out, both Károly and Aurel were drafted. Károly served in the 309th regiment of the national guard infantry, for which in 1917 he was awarded a silver medal for valor, second class. He was captured by the Russians and assigned to a prisoner's war camp near Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. While in captivity, he met Evdokia, the daughter of the well-known architect N.V. Dmitriev, who had moved from Moscow to Vladivostok to escape the tumult of the Russian revolution. As Gonda spoke Hungarian, German, English, French, and Russian, Evdokia hired him as the language teacher for her two sons from the previous marriage, George and Vladimir. Károly and Evdokia married in January 1919, and Gonda adopted Evdokia's sons.
Life in Shanghai
As Russia was getting entrenched in the civil war, the couple left the country and went to China, arriving in Shanghai on September 15, 1920; the children followed soon after. Gonda found employment at the Property and Estate Department of the British firm Probst, Hanbury & Co., and the family settled on Dixwell Road (now Liyang Lu 溧阳路).Gonda Having soon attained a promotion, Gonda relocated to the more central Ferry Road (now Xikang Lu 西康路), where they lived in an affluent colonial-style villa, with a private tennis court, driving a large green Packard and employing several servants. As he rose to be a renowned architect, Gonda revolved with the foreign elites, including Shanghai's top oligarch Victor Sassoon. The family also socialized with the Hungarians, Austrians, and Russians, many of whom were former prisoners of war.
C. H. Gonda had an architectural career that spanned 25 years. By some accounts, he designed more than forty buildings in Shanghai alone. He was an avid proponent of modernist style, having published a eulogy for it entitled "Modern and Ancient Forms in Local Architecture," writing under the pseudonym Adnog (his surname reversed), in which he expressed his animosity towards historicism: “As an engineer would refuse to design an airship in Gothic or Renaissance style, an architect should refuse to design a bank building or an apartment house in Renaissance of Gothic. […] The pulse of our time has to be heard, and from the chaos of indescribable horrors of bad taste slowly but surely the new style is awakening.”Shanghai Sunday Times, 22 Dec 1929.
Gonda was among the first practitioners of the modernist, or art deco, style in Shanghai: “A new architecture has been born out of our mechanical age, and rightly or wrongly termed ‘modernistic,’ is the logical outcome of the tremendous social changes in our lives, in our methods of construction and in our needs and tastes.”.The China Press, Nov 2, 1932 Consistent with his commitment to technological progress, Gonda considered cinema the most important of contemporary entertainments and embraced its influence on modern architecture. Among the two dozen of his buildings in China that have been identified to this day, more than half are movie theaters.
Gonda was also a proficient oil painter; his paintings were frequently exhibited at Shanghai art shows,The North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, 30 Nov 1929; The China Press, 30 Nov, 1935. and he sat on the selection committees.The China Press, Feb 26, 1929. Gonda was an active member of the Shanghai Jewish community and participated in its fund-raising campaigns,The China Press, Nov 15, 1929. as well as in Russian charity events.The China Press, Dec 24, 1930.
In 1938, the architect's brother, Dr. Aurel Gonda, and his family escaped the fascist Vienna and joined C. H. Gonda in Shanghai. After the Communist victory in China in 1949, the brothers and their families left for the US and settled in Lakewood, New Jersey. Having retired from architecture, C. H. Gonda focused on landscape painting. He died in 1969, one year after his wife.
Architectural career
The 1920s In the early months of 1922, the architectural studio of C. H. Gonda (Chinese name 鸿达) opened at 4 Ezra Road (now Xinkang Lu 新康路).The North-China Desk Hong List and Directory, 1922 July. Initially, it only employed one Russian assistant architect, N. N. Emanoff, and one Chinese agent, L. C. Mow,SUPPLEMENT TO THE NORTH-CHINA DESK HONG LIST JULY 1922 but as the practice grew, it employed other architects, engineers, interior designers, and draftsmen, mostly from among the Eastern European and the Russian communities, as well as local Chinese specialists. A business listing of C. H. Gonda's firm in July 1926 lists 11 persons on the staff, including a representative in Tianjin.
Specializing primarily in commercial buildings, Gonda's studio won numerous design competitions and received major commissions in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Yantai, Tianjin, and Beijing. His first known project was the rebuilding and the modernization of the Lane, Crawford & Co. store on Shanghai's main shopping promenade, Nanking Road, which was built without interrupting the store's operation and finished in December 1922. The show windows, believed to be the largest in the Far East, spanned 48 feet and installation of extra large glass required some ingenuous engineering and the use of sturdy concrete pillars sunk into the soil.The North-China-Daily News, 16 Dec 1922. In summer 1923, Gonda designed and supervised the construction of the China and the South Sea Bank (中南银行).The North-China Daily News, 9 July 1923 He commuted to Amoy (now Xiamen) several times and in 1923 was elected honorary architect to the Amoy University.The China Press; Jan 24, 1926; C1.
Gonda's next project was the design of the Sun Sun Department Store (新新百货公司) for the local businessmen S. K. Lau, situated on Nanking Road. The construction began in early 1924, and the building, which cost 4,000,000 taels, was inaugurated in January 1926. The seven-story department store, hotel and amusement centre was topped with a tower, bringing the total height to 55 meters (180 feet).China Weekly Review, Jan 23, 1926, p. 209. The press called Sun Sun Co. “spacious, commodious and different department store […] constructed on the most modern lines, [with] plenty of windows and good indirect lighting, comfortable lifts and adequate display counters.”The North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, 30 Jan 1926
In April 1925, the construction work started on the six-story Bank of East Asia (东亚银行), on the corner of Jiujiang and Middle Sichuan Roads.The North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, 25 April 1925. When the building was inaugurated in February 1926, it was called Gonda's “triumph in a style of architecture new to Shanghai.”Shanghai Times, 1 Feb 1926. The building boasted innovative structural decisions, such as the banking hall without a single column. This project emphatically put forward the modernist aesthetic, still novel at that time, which would become Gonda's signature.
In 1927, Gonda's other project rose in the downtown – the Shahmoon Building, at 21 Museum Road (today's Huqiu Lu 虎丘路), the property of S. E. Shahmoon & Co. Its architectural design was praised for its originality, simplicity and restrained ornamentation.The North - China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, 11 Feb 1928. The curved facade featured three horizontal divisions topped by a classic stepped-back art deco pinnacle – a recurring element in Gonda's buildings. The Shahmoon Building housed the Capitol Theatre at the bottom and offices of major film studios on the five floors above. The 1000-seat Capitol Theatre was Shanghai's first air-conditioned movie house, and the first to feature a pillar-less design, for unobstructed sight lines. The foyer was richly decorated with frescoes – the work of the Russian artist Victor Podgoursky – and twenty allegorical sculptures representing various arts, created by the Hungarian George Koppany. Concealed lighting fixtures and ornamental copper grills lent the space its theatrical and elevated atmosphere.
In February 1928, C. H. Gonda relocated his practice to the Shahmoon Building and announced a partnership with the German architect Emil Busch, under the name Gonda & Busch (Chinese name 鸿宝).The China Press, 15 Aug 1929. The new studio produced the design of the Grand Theatre (大光明电影院), on Bubbling Well Road opposite the Racecourse, which opened in December 1928. The movie house, constructed in the old Carlton Ballroom building, was called “the most luxurious in the Far East.” Besides a 1200-seat auditorium, it had two tearooms decorated in jazz patterns. Gonda & Busch were said to have “achieved a noteworthy effect in combining the beautiful old circular staircases, spacious lounges, and rotunda with the most advanced ideas in theatrical design.”The China Press, 16 Dec 1928. The walls and staircases were treated with filigree flat-oil stain in old gold – the first use of this technique in China – executed by the studio of the Russian artist Jacob Lehonos.
Melchers Godown was among other projects of Gonda & Busch, which was the construction of the 50,000 square-foot 5-story warehouse, owned by the German A. Widmann, which opened in May 1929 on East Broadway (now Dongdaming Lu 东大名路). At the end of the year, the Gonda & Busch partnership dissolved.The North-China Desk Hong List and Directory, January 1930.
In December 1929, C. H. Gonda publicized his design of the 16-story Grand Hotel, to stand next to the Grand Theatre facing the Racecourse. The 560-room hotel was appointed to the top floors, while the lower floors provided ten lounges, ballrooms, and concert rooms. Later announcements anticipated the start of the construction for autumn 1930 and increased the projected height of the building to 21 floors. The construction, intended for the Grand Realty Co., was estimated at 900,000 taels, later reevaluated to 2,500,000 taels.The China Weekly Review; Sep 27, 1930. Another project for the Grand Realty was publicized simultaneously, estimated to cost 200,000 taels. This was a four-story office building at the corner of Burkill and Park Roads, designated to host legal and medical professionals.Shanghai Sunday Times, 15 Dec 1929. Neither of these projects was realized.
Another unrealized 1929 project was a 7-story apartment house on the corner of Rue Lafayette and Route Pichon, in the French Concession. The building was to contain 28 apartments, garages, and a roof garden; the cost of the construction was estimated at 200,000 taels.
The 1930s