The Navy YMCA: “A Haven of Rest and Recreation for Sailors Ashore”
Plaque on Qinghai Dalou 海青大楼, as the Navy YMCA is known now. Image: Marvel Hill, 2024, Historic Shanghai Wechat group.
Alarming recent photos of the Navy Y.M.C.A. building, on the corner of Sichuan and Hongkong Roads, show the building’s windows and doors bricked up and concreted over. This is probably a sign of an impending gutting and a ruinous renovation.
A 1930s map pointing at the location of Army & Navy YMCA.
The plaque on the building says it was designed by “Asia Engineering Corporation consult engineer H. L. Alt”. At the time of the construction, however, the design was credited to Arthur Quintin Adamson (1881-after 1943), head of the architecture bureau of YMCA in China. Adamson created many “Y” buildings throughout the country (amounting to 20 as of 1931). In Shanghai, he was involved in the Foreign YMCA (with Elliott Hazzard), Boys’ Building of the Chinese YMCA and the American Masonic Temple on Route Dufour. In 1933, he participated in the construction of the International YMCA in Jerusalem.
Navy YMCA in 1937. Harrison Forman. PastVu: https://pastvu.com/p/779271
American SVC members outside the entrance of Navy YMCA, 1925. Historical Photographs of China, Bristol. PastVu: https://pastvu.com/p/2115051
The building received enthusiastic reviews in the press: “The six-story Navy Y.M.C.A. building only recently completed, at the corner of Szechuen and Hongkong Roads, is the finest Navy building outside of the United States and is not excelled anywhere in America. Although the building was planned primarily for American sailors, its doors are open to the sailors of other nationalities as well..." - The China Weekly Review, November 1923.
“On first entering the building one is immediately impressed with a spacious and well furnished lobby, with the blue draperies at the windows, containing lounging chairs, reading tables, writing desks, etc., all in hardwood, with leather upholstering, furniture matching the brown woodwork paneling of the room. There is also a library of good books, the latest magazines and daily newspapers, and at the general counter are foreign-dressed English-speaking Chinese clerks ready to give information or other service needed. Just off from the lobby is a billiard room, containing four American tables and one of English design. The table lighting and billiard marking systems are all of the very latest type. Here also is the well-stocked canteen with candies, toilet articles, and other goods popular with the sailors. There is also a corner for games, with tables for chess, checkers, etc., and a player piano and gramophone...”
The dining room accommodated 75 people, and there was room for another 50 in the area around the soda fountain. Shanghai women’s organizations enthusiastically participated in providing “clean, wholesome atmosphere” at the Navy YMCA. There was also a big gym, a room for weightlifting, a stage for concerts and lectures, a movie screening facility, and a 60 x 20 ft pool in the basement, which at the time of the construction was deemed “the finest in the Orient”.
A dance party at the Navy YMCA in 1924.
This was an installment of NETA, a column about lesser-known architects of Shanghai.