More Encouraging News From Taipei – Tsaoshan Police Station gets heritage listing

It seems Taipei has really started to get its act together as regards preserving historic buildings. I’ve blogged before about the Dihua Street restoration and other projects. Now it has been announced that Tsaoshan Police Station will be preserved as a local government-listed historic building, according to Taipei City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. The station was  designed by architect Ide Kaoru, a chief engineer in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945), and the man behind the listed Zhongshan Hall. The station is in the Yangmingshan district which I’ve blogged about repeatedly and is an area full of architectural candidates for preservation that are both of interest and have a historic role in Taipei’s history.

More good news, and correcting bad decisions of the past, is that the building is located close to the site of Taiwan Railways Administration’s 100-year-old Xinbeitou Station, which was dismantled in 1988 to make way for the Tamsui metro line and is now scheduled for reassembly this year. The authorities have approved shifting the station 50 meters from its original position and allocated NT$20.6 million (US$678,425) for the undertaking.

Now a couple of other suggestions for preservation in the area:

The Aifu Road bungalows, which have always looked like potentially highly desirable residences to me – more on them here too

the Grass Mountain waterworks

Tsaoshan Police Station

The old Xinbeitou Railway Station – scheduled to be rebuilt this year