The first generation of luxury apartments in China, the Prime Minister of the Republic of China used to be a wedding room, and the comfort has never been surpassed.

1924, J.H. Blackstone, an American who traveled to China, built the most luxurious serviced apartment at that time: Blackstone Apartment. Building 1 has 6 floors and 3 1 suite, which provides not only heated swimming pool, restaurant, ballroom and elevator, but also refrigerator, gas, heating and even special personal butler service. After the house was completed, it became the most fashionable social place in the city at that time, except for its residential function. Xiong Xiling, the prime minister of Beiyang period, and Mao Yanwen, a talented woman of the Republic of China, spent two months in the Blackstone apartment. Six years ago, Danish designer Ma stumbled across this place and rented an apartment of 140 square meters. He made his own furniture, scoured thousands of porcelain, found wooden products from flea markets, and made various tin toys and pencil boxes in the 1960s and 1970s ... After numerous adjustments and experiments, this place was manually transformed into his ideal single apartment. Across the street is Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. When you open the window, you can hear musicians practicing the piano. I prefer living here to commercial housing outside. Everything at home is genuine. Only by touching them every day can I really relax. Editor Xiaoyue Shanghai Fuxing Middle Road 133 1 is a mysterious residence. The black appearance, the arc and decoration of the terrace show baroque style and distinctive temperament. Residents usually come in and out, but tourists are refused to visit, and occasionally pedestrians stop to take pictures. In Shanghai, many old people call this building "Fuxing Apartment", and its other name "Blackstone Apartment" is more popular among young people. Image source: Xuhui District Cultural Bureau 20 13, Danish furniture designer Soren Matz moved into a south-facing suite on the fifth floor of Blackstone Apartment. Finding this house was purely accidental. At that time, a Danish friend wanted to return to China, so he subletted the house to Ma. The landlord's family is from Shanghai. Seeing that Ma Wenshu protected the old house very well, they agreed to let him move in and have lived there ever since. Blackstone Apartment was built in 1924, formerly known as "Lafayette Road 133 1" and "Citi Apartment". The builder of the building was James Harry blackstone, who came to China from the United States to preach, mainly in Nanjing and Shanghai. He also gave himself a China name: "Song is reasonable". /kloc-Shanghai street in the 1930 s, the source network is around 1920, and there are no high-rise apartments in Shanghai. High-rise buildings are mainly concentrated in Nanjing West Road and Yuyuan Road. At that time, Fuxing Middle Road (formerly known as Lafayette Road) belonged to the suburbs, with vast territory, few people and lack of popularity. In 1930s, the land price in Shanghai Concession skyrocketed, and the land was precious, so developers began to invest in high-rise apartments. In order to serve more and more American expatriates, Song made up his mind to build a "Blackstone Apartment" on Galeries Lafayette Road. What he wants to build is not only a high-rise apartment, but also the largest and most luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai and even China. The whole building adopts the most advanced reinforced concrete structure, with six floors in total. The facade faces the road, which is eclectic and symmetrical. There is an oversized entrance on the first floor, and the Corinthian double columns under the entrance are dotted with iris patterns, symbolizing the noble status of users. According to the design scheme reported at that time, the building has 3 1 suite, 20 large suites, 3 medium suites and 8 small suites. Each suite has a living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. In addition, there are refrigerators, gas and small laundry equipment in the kitchen, and even the bathroom also supplies hot and cold water. The mosaic tiles in the apartment have been well preserved until the Blackstone apartment was built, only to find that it was more luxurious than expected, not only with luxury elevators, central heating and servant service, but also with foreign butlers. Now the public area on the first floor of the apartment corridor is equipped with a four-season constant temperature swimming pool, restaurant and ballroom, and the roof garden on the top floor overlooks the nearby community. Three tennis courts and 12 parking garage have been added outdoors, which are free to use. Song confidently advertised: "The best serviced apartment in China." Blackstone apartment rental advertisement, Continental Daily 1925, such a luxurious house naturally has a high rent. According to different room types, the rent ranges from 50 taels to 152 taels of silver per month, which is equivalent to the ordinary people's income at that time. Due to the luxurious conditions, the (former) French Concession Commission ordered the building to be classified as a "hotel" instead of an "apartment" and raised its taxes and fees. Even so, once Blackstone Apartment came out, it was warmly welcomed, and foreigners and church people from all over the world rushed to live in it. 1in June, 927, J.K.Davis, American consul in Nanjing, came to Shanghai and stayed in the apartment. After the completion of Blackstone Apartment, it is not only a residential building, but also a popular social place in the city. The first art exhibition will be held in room 25 of this building soon. In the conference hall on the first floor, a seminar on "Equal Rights for Men and Women in Shanghai Concession and French Concession" was held, which was very lively for a time. Xiong Xiling and Mao Yanwen held a wedding reception in Shanghai, including many celebrities from China. The most famous is the marriage between Xiong Xiling, the prime minister of Beiyang period, and Mao Yanwen, a talented woman of the Republic of China. The wedding became a major event in Shanghai at that time, and many media reported it one after another. 1935 February 10, the day after Xiong Xiling and Mao Yanwen got married in Shanghai, they lived in Room 36 of the apartment, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a footman, a second-class room, with a monthly rent of 148. Ma's home is in Blackstone apartment, with an area of140m2. It has a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. This is an ordinary apartment, but it is enough for one person. Now, opposite Blackstone Apartment is the rehearsal hall and performance hall of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and next door is the famous Shanghai Conservatory of Music. When you open the window, you can hear the melodious piano practice in the building. The horse likes it very much. Ma has high demands on life, and every detail of his family has been carefully screened by him. The hardware and structure of the old house have been preserved, and the old doors and windows have not been moved. Because he couldn't see the earliest color of the door frame, Ma chose the closest cream color, repainted it and put on the delicate old-fashioned door handle. The old floor on the ground was a very popular French mosaic floor in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s. Ma Wenshu took down the boards, polished and oiled them one by one, and then put them together in the original order. Only the floors of the kitchen and bathroom were changed, because the floor heating facilities were added and the simple cement floor was repaved. Horses have collected all kinds of chairs, and their obsession with wood products when moving comes from childhood memories. When he was a child, he learned to make furniture by himself, such as cabinets, chairs and wooden doors, which can make him return to a relaxed and comfortable environment. As a furniture designer, Ma has been collecting all kinds of furniture since the age of 19. There are 200 chairs in the warehouse on the outskirts of Shanghai alone. Whenever I move to a new home, I will go to the warehouse and choose one to put in my new home. "Most of the furniture here is customized by Ma for this house. The dining table is specially found outside according to the size of the area. The printed pattern on the desktop is designed by a good friend, and can seat 10 people at most. The hammock in the living room is the most proud piece of furniture for horses. It is usually put away and opened on weekends. You can sleep and rest in various comfortable positions in the hammock without feeling tired at all. The coffee table next to the sofa was brought home from Japan. There is a hidden cover on it, which can be used as a coffee table in summer. When you open the lid in winter, you can turn it into a Japanese charcoal fire basin, and you can sit in front of the coffee table and cook tea to keep warm. He went to Kyoto alone at the age of 16, where he worked and lived with craftsmen for more than 20 years. Meditation and making matcha have become part of daily activities. There are several new works designed by horses at home. This sofa chair designed jointly with paul smith was exhibited in paul smith's flagship store in London at 5438+00 on June this year, recreating the modernist style of 1930s and 1960s. He doesn't quite agree with the habit of young people buying furniture online. " Chairs are used to wrap the body. Just browsing the web page online, you can't know whether it suits your body curvature. Only by sitting down and feeling can we understand what posture and shape are most comfortable. "Ma Wenshu likes everything with texture. His family collects some small textiles, ancient Peruvian fabrics, Asian ceramics, Indian paintings and European glass products ... these are all part of his collection. Besides Shanghai, he also has many collections in his homes in Denmark and Japan. He said, "Different houses need different furniture, and this home needs to be filled one by one. He was obsessed with China's gizmos and collected thousands of them. Contrary to his serious appearance, Ma Wenshu is also a fan of toys and various inventions in China. When he is not busy, he will search all over the flea market in Shanghai and search for gadgets he is interested in. I have some friends from China who will be very surprised when they come home. They don't know what these are, but they are at a loss. Among his thousands of collections, it can last from the 1920s to the 1990s, spanning 70 to 80 years. These wood products have practical uses, such as gadgets, peach swords, shoulder poles, rolling pins, dust removal and so on. These things that contemporary young people can't understand are all treasures, and he demonstrated excitedly in front of the camera. There are also some toys from the 1960s and 1970s in China. They can blink and shine, and one can lay eggs. There are also some tin toys, such as tin frogs and tin parrots, which are very interesting. "He felt that in the past thousands of years, many tools used by China people were very practical, but people's lives were gradually forgotten. The texture of these wooden toys is much better than that of plastic toys now, which makes people feel fun and can exercise their intelligence. When asked whether these collections are related to value-added, Ma denied it: "Generally, the cost of going to a flea market is more than 100 yuan, and most gadgets are 10 yuan and 30 yuan. You can buy a lot of fun with small change. Only by touching the real things at home can we really decompress Ma Wenshu. He has lived in Shanghai for more than ten years, such as the Bund and other old houses, but he still wants to return to the (old) French Concession. This home in Blackstone Apartment has satisfied his ideal good life. Six years later, Ma's house has been built according to the requirements. I like going home. The outside world is full of concrete, sand and shiny things. Only when I get home and touch them with my hands and feel these warm materials can I really relax. Everything in my family is real. "Every morning, he prepares a bowl of healthy breakfast for himself, including juice, oats and a cup of coffee with freshly ground coffee beans. Work in a clean kitchen for a while, and then go to work by bike. Ma Wenshu is a celibate and has never been married. But at this age, he often feels lonely and hopes that someone can accompany him. Maybe I want to live in Africa next year, or I want to do something else. Marriage will bind me. But everything is unknown. Maybe one day I will have a family. " Another difficult thing for him is to retire. He has many plans, such as writing several books for his strange collection, and teaching a lot of experience about architecture and furniture design when he was young ... Some 70-year-old people will drink red wine and play golf, leading such an old-fashioned life. I will never do this again. Although I live a stable life every day now, maybe tomorrow will be a brand-new story. Part of the source: Jie Jiang's "The Past of Blackstone Apartment" Wen Wei Po Part of the picture source: Xuhui District Cultural Bureau, network source: a satellite TV.