The Old College Municipal Francaise Taking a Hell of a Beating

The old College Municipal Franciase on Nanchang Road (formerly Route Vallon) in Frenchtown metamorphosed into the Shanghai Science Hall and you used to be able to get in and walk around. It was a lovely building, a truly delightful campus style college building redolent of 1930s Shanghai. I mentioned in my round up of Shanghai’s architectural losses last year – What We Lost 2011 – the College Municipal Francaise was under wraps by the builders and who knew what was happening.

Well, I wandered past the other day and things look distinctly worrying, though not surprising. It appears that the entire interior has been ripped out now (as usual for “renovations”) and the window frames have also been removed (again par for the course for Shanghai “renovations”). Though I’m not expecting the structure to be pulled down we have to say that it has been gutted now.

The College Municipal Francaise on Nanchang Road under wraps

Here you can see windows with the frames removed – rarely once removed do the originals get returned

Here you see the adjoining building to the College being refurbished too – top right note the original wooden window frame remaining – the ground floor ones have been ripped out and trashed.