Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/742

734 [See pace 732.] THE RUSSO-CHINESE BANK PREMISES.

THE PREMISES OF THE YOKOHAMA SPECIE BANK, TIENTSIN.

the Government Fervice in German New Guinea. Three years later, in 1889, he returned to Berlin, and entered the service of the Direction der Disconto-Gesellschaft. He remained in Berlin about eight years, and was then sent by the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank to the East, where he has managed successively various branches in the Straits Settlements and China. He is now for the third time manager of the Tientsin branch, having resumed the duties in March, 1908. At one time he was manager of the German Concession at Tientsin, and was afterwards instrumental in forming the first German Municipal Council in the Settlement. For his signal services to the Concession, he was decorated with the Order of the Prussian Crown in 1906.

THE ASTOR HOUSE HOTEL.

Visitors to Tientsin will be most favourably impressed by the Astor House Hotel, both by reason of its ideal situation facing the Victoria Park, and its comfortable and luxurious aiipointments.

In the early eighties the site upon which it stands was occupied by what was then known as a "mud-house" on the Bund. This unpretentious structure was enlarged and renovated in 1883 by Mr. G. Ritter, who took out a licence for the premises ; and for some ten years this constituted practically the only hotel in the Settlement. On June 13, 1894, the foundation stone of the present building was laid, and in May of the following year the Astor House Hotel was ready for occupation. In 1895 the concern was floated as a joint stock company, with Mr. Hitter, the former proprietor, as manager.

The hotel has seventy bedrooms, and a spacious dining room with accommodation for over three hundred people, whilst there are the usual reception, drawing, reading and billiard rooms, and bar. Power for lighting the building and for driving the electric fans is generated by means of a private installation; and a steam heating apparatus is employed to regulate the temperature in the winter months. The cuisine is excellent, the hotel having its own cold storage appliances and its own farm for