Disappearing Corners

Address: No. 1115, Hami Road

Text with kind permission from www.Hudec.sh

Yan Xi Tang, known, today, as the Catholic Country Church in the western suburbs of Shanghai, was previously known as the Chapel of the Westerners Cemetery on Rubicon Road Ma Xiangbo and other famous Chinese educators and Catholic patriots raised funds to complete the Church in 1925. The two-storey reinforced concrete structure has a building area of 239 square meters. The building’s address is now on Hami Road near the 6th Gate No.1115,.
The church imitates the structure of Byzantine architecture, emphasizing basic characteristics such as vaults, arches and domes and walls coated in rough textured cement. Sitting upon a square base is a round dome made of steel and concrete. With four clustered piers on the four corners supporting the pendentive and the dome, the plan forms a Latin Cross. Light cast through the window apertures on the bottom of the dome gives the illusion of the huge dome suspended in the air. The ground and the second floors are paved with colourful terrazzo tiles. Doors, arches and lancet windows are of Gothic style. In the north of the church, along with a chapel, stands a Romanesque clock tower with Gothic lancet windows. The 4.96 square-meter courtyard of the church was used primarily as a cemetery and mortuary. Entering from an underground passage, one could hold a memorial ceremony in the church. 4,000 square meters of the church grounds was transformed into the Xin Jing High school in 1968, while the remainder was employed as a nursery for baby animals of the Shanghai Zoo from 1974, until recently.
Radically different from Hudec’s more traditional structures in Shanghai, this Byzantine church shows Hudec’s accurate grasp of different architectural styles. Hungary had once been populated by the seven tribes of “Magyars” coming from the East, carrying features of Eastern culture. There are still numerous Byzantine architectural style buildings in Hungary, once the centre of European Gothic and Romanticism.

Tags: Changning District